


Growing Pains

by RainonyourBack



Category: Shaman King (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Destiny as a choice, F/F, F/M, Multi, Panic Attack, Platonic Soulmates, Polyamory, Romantic Soulmates, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, X-Laws-Typical Christianity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24769747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainonyourBack/pseuds/RainonyourBack
Summary: It happens at seven. Your soulmate, if you have one, brands your skin with the first words you will ever receive from them. But not everyone is willing to accept destiny; in fact, some people would like nothing more than to break their chains.
Relationships: Asakura Hao/Iron Maiden Jeanne/Tamamura Tamao
Comments: 38
Kudos: 13





	1. It happens at seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To lie; to care; to remember.

It happens at seven. _The age of wisdom_ , they say, which shows what they know.

ꙮ

She grows up watching models in shop windows, plastered with obviously fake marks. That is, somewhat, how she learns to read. It’s a storybook fact of the world, the only golden ray of sun on her small existence. People are not alone. People – everyone – has another, waiting somewhere in the world, with the first words you will ever tell them inscribed on their skin like a promise. Everyone is looking for their another, and when they find it they live happily ever after.

When she sees them for the first time, she sees no mark, and it takes a bit of time and courage to ask. But she doesn’t have to wait for permission, for she gets a glimpse of Marco’s as he washes up in the frigid waters of the bay. She tells him it’s dangerous. He says the salt and the danger carry a blessing and he turns to dunk his head below the waters.

The words are splayed on his shoulder blades, like wings. She knows the letters and, surprisingly enough, the language. _What do you want?_

Marco says he heard them in his ear when he first entered the Church, and Luchist smiles thinly. Jeanne does not point out it makes no sense. When she asks, _he_ shows his, on the inside of his wrist. _Come with me_.

Luchist is impossibly old and says he does not remember who said the words. It did not work out. That is puzzling to her; that it _could not work out_. She thought those who have words have a destiny picked out for them. That God would not allow such a terrifying despair to form. Doesn’t He know best?

He does, Luchist says, but He does not control the human soul. Free will is His last and most terrifying gift. You have to choose to pursue your destiny, he says, every minute, with all of your soul. Otherwise it falls out of your hands, like sand.

She will realize much later that his mark is not flared. Neither is Marco’s. It hasn’t happened yet. But she doesn’t know then.

On her arms, a random day in a random year because she does not have any clear records, there are suddenly two lines she does not recognize. They could pass for darkened bracelets, circling taut around her biceps. Strange words in a strange alphabet. She keeps the date and the marks to herself.

Luchist pauses the day he sees them. He is bandaging her, careful to stay extra appropriate and show her how to do it herself. He traces one with wonder in his eyes, but he says nothing. He doesn’t mention it to Marco; Jeanne doesn’t, either.

ꙮ

Tamao has one on each ankle, and she does not know if they are meant to be read as one or two. One is in Japanese, familiar words that are among her first kanji. _You should be careful_.

So she is, in all things. The other sentence is in European script, and the oddity of it is enough to pique the Asakura family’s curiosity. Mikihisa is the only one who does not give her grief about it.

“We’ll deal with it when it comes,” he tells her. “Race you to the peak?”

She still wonders. One? Two?

…

Miki’s, as he explains before she asks, was burned off in the same accident that took his face. Later she will wonder whether Hao meant to do that, meant to erase the fact that a human-born Shaman with no ties to any family worth a mention is his new mother’s soulmate. But Hao does not really seem to care about Keiko, so maybe he was oblivious instead of cruel.

ꙮ

In his first life he has no words. She says it isn’t odd, that many humans have no words, that there are other pursuits. Still, it is another reason to hurl stones at his head.

He is in the middle of carving _Demon Child_ into his arm when he hears the crowd gather around her hut.

…

The second time around he doesn’t even look at his words. He makes it a point to propose to a girl who does not wear his, and mothers children he cares not for, and these two facts are in no way related.

…

This time he has two lines, curled around his wrists like chains he means to break.


	2. The silence of these hallowed halls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To hide; to hope; to wonder.

On the ship, it is taboo to talk about the words. They are hidden behind gloves and uniforms and hair for those unfortunate enough to have them near their face. She does not ask about them. She knows these all represent another destiny, one they choose to actively refuse so that the rest of the virtuous can have theirs.

They forget their words in favor of a higher calling, that of Justice, and she is the personification of that Justice. She cannot afford to be curious.

She wears long dresses to hide, just as the rest of them.

ꙮ

The subject is much too intimate to ask Yoh about. Tamao struggles to remember what he said to her when they first met. She was so little. It was before her words. Mikihisa had come to talk to Yohmei, and he left her on the porch to count the gravel.

Yoh came over, warm and blinding. She remembers him opening his mouth to say something.

She doesn’t remember what he said.

She does not really need to, in spite of everything. She knows Yoh pretty well, the result of much hiding and eavesdropping when he is training in the yard. She cooks for him just to earn the right to watch him eat. She steals as many moments from him as she can, and it’s clear as day.

Yoh has never been careful about anything, and there is no way he ever told her to be careful.

“It can’t be him,” Conchi says, as gently as he can, which is not very.

“What do you know?”

“I know,” Ponchi continues, “that your marks will light up when you hear the words. They shine like… like…”

“Like dew on a young maiden’s skin. Like make-up on an idol. Like silver and gold.”

Tamao stares blankly at her ankle. The marks are faintly dark, not smudged at all, but certainly not silver and gold.

She wonders if anyone ever decided the words didn’t matter.

…

Soon she doesn’t have to wonder anymore. There is a commotion, one summer, as Yoh goes to visit his grandmother.

When he comes back, his open shirt lets out a gleam. The words on his chest – she had never managed to read them fully – she sees them now.

They glow.

He has found his soulbound mate and it is not her.

ꙮ

In camp the words do not matter much.

Luchist’s are flared silver but that is only one reason why Hao trusts him so much. It certainly does not keep Kanna from turning around him like a cat trying to corner a hawk.

Ashil’s are not flared, have never been. Still he follows Hao around like a lost puppy, and Hao must admire the guts it takes to do so. He doesn’t wonder if anyone will ever free the boy. He strongly wishes no one ever does. There is a tyranny to the words, and he is all about freedom.

Sometimes he traces the lines of his own chains and wonders, still. He has little use for a soulmate. He already has one. Wouldn’t that be perfectly fitting? For him to meet Yoh, and their words to both flare at the same time?

He doesn’t think it will be the case. He doesn’t need the gods, or whatever it is that writes the words, to agree with him. He makes his own destiny, and the words do not matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure there would be interest for this thing and then there was. So I'm going to continue to update the English version of this little thing. And maybe even put the French on the Archive. If you see something similar on fanfiction.net, it's also me! Dio- I mean Rain.
> 
> Comments not only feed me, but can influence what I write. Some scenes coming up were only borne of the suggestions of other readers. So if you have thoughts. I'm willing to hear them!


	3. See no evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To ask; to ask; to state.

It is chance that lets her see Meene’s. She wanders up to the deck one day that she needs fresh air, trying to ignore the fact that she bled through _another_ blouse and that it took much too long to stop it, and there Meene is, gliding like a dolphin in the pool. In her swimsuit there is no hiding the mark curved like a hand around her throat.

As she emerges near Jeanne she is for a moment confused, a monument of strength and life and _gold_ , and then she drops back into the water like she was just hit. Jeanne definitely saw the mark. Though the words were unclear, it was flared.

It feels like she just saw her naked. Though curiosity burns through her chest Jeanne turns away, almost runs, doesn’t. There is sound behind her, and she can imagine Meene rising out of the water, finding her towel, finding the scarf that usually covers her throat.

“My lady…”

She doesn’t move. She doesn’t want to know. No, she doesn’t want to want to know, even if she does.

She swallows and it feels like hot coals inside her throat.

“I did not mean to intrude.”

“You… You did not. I do not want to hide anything from you,” Meene says, as she steps closer. “If you want to…”

It feels almost obscene. Far is the time when she looked at fake marks in shop windows. Here, to know, to want to know…

“Does it cause you pain,” she asks, without looking.

“Every day,” Meene says. “And I would not want it any other way.”

ꙮ

Tamao takes a deep breath and places the kokkuri board in front of her.

For all the divinations she has successfully, or not so successfully, attempted throughout the years, she has never tried to garner any information about her marks. One or two, she has wondered, but never has she…. Tried to see. To know.

It isn’t about cowardice, though her spirits tease her with it. Instead it feels more like… like the looking is the weakness. She should trust destiny, shouldn’t she? Yoh isn’t for her. That much is obvious. So, instead, she should have faith, and wait for love to come.

It is weakness when she asks.

A soft breeze comes from the open window to her room, and she closes her eyes so she doesn’t look Ponchi and Conchi in the eye.

She still doesn’t dare ask for a name (or two?). It would be too direct. It would be _cheating_.

Instead she thinks of little things. Answers that could plug the leaking well that is her heart. She is not asking for the whole story, just what will give her the confidence of living it.

She places the coin on the _tori_ gate, empties her mind, and asks. “Do I get to meet them?”

Them feels safe. It could be singular or plural. It doesn’t let her spirits trick her with roundabout answers. That is what she thought when she thought of the question, at least.

Under her finger the coin moves, and she opens her eyes to the ever-simple _yes_.

Flowers bloom in her throat and for a second she almost lets go of the coin. She may get her romance after all, like in the manga she reads. Before she can think it over, she asks another question: “Are they nice?”

This time she doesn’t close her eyes, and time slows down until she can’t tell anymore if she really said the words out loud. Are they teasing her? Is it still a yes?

But no, it isn’t. The coin moves. And firmly wedges itself to the _no_.

Her throat closes up completely. For a moment her head turns, she wants to ask Ponchi and Conchi if they’re honest, if they’re teasing her, but her mouth refuses to move. All she can do is stare. It’s dumb to make a mountain of this molehill, and no doubt her spirits are tricking her, but she cannot shake the feeling that they aren’t.

In the end, she takes a deep breath and asks one last question. It’s all she will allow herself to know.

“Do we get a happy ending?”

ꙮ

“What do you think they even mean?”

“They don’t _mean_ anything. It’s all bullshit.”

“No it’s not,” Mathilda insists.

She, herself, doesn’t have any, but Marion does.

“Marion came out _already flared_. And when we touch, it feels…”

“I don’t want to know,” Ashil yelps. “Isn’t that just proof it’s bullshit! She got hers once she was already here with you.”

“Boris and Yamada flared together.”

“And they hate each other! You’re so goddamn dumb.”

“You’re just jealous because Hao doesn’t wear yours,” Mathilda retorts, bitterly sharp. She knows it’s an unfair blow, and almost apologizes when Ashil’s face goes green. Almost.

“He certainly thinks it’s bullshit. And if you don’t, why stick around her so much? You’re not hers.”

“But she’s mine,” Mathilda counters. “That means something.”

“It really doesn’t,” Hao weighs in, appearing as if from nowhere. Ashil jumps to attention, but Mathilda just pouts.

“You shouldn’t fight about such human concerns,” their master says sagely.

“You think it’s a human thing?” Mathilda, as always, only hears what she wants to hear. “You think it has something to do with humanity?”

According to Ashil, Hao is being way too nice when he doesn’t get cross. “The marks certainly don’t seem to know the difference between humans and shamans. That should be enough to see how useless they are, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ashil breathes fervently.

“I’m not sure I understand why,” Mathilda grimaces.

“Let’s take you as an example,” Hao continues. “You chose to be Marion’s companion though you don’t have her marks. I find that much more admirable.”

“How so? She has –“

“Yes, she does. But you don’t. You made the choice to dedicate yourself to her anyways. And me, of course.”

His grin is boyish and Ashil falls deeper, if that’s even possible. Hao ruffles his glove as he scratches at his wrist.

“You chose this freely. And that makes you exactly the type of Shaman I want with me.”

Mathilda flushes, and Hao smiles before moving on.

“It really doesn’t suit you,” Ashil bites when Hao is out of earshot. “You look like you’ve been hit.”

He’s not sure why he’s so sharp with her. He won the argument. He should be happy. Didn’t Hao tacitly condone his own choice? Indirectly say he wanted Ashil with him?

Yes.

But for the barest moment he saw the dark scrawl around his master’s wrist, and it chokes him in his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your encouragement got me off my lazy bum and back before the keyboard. Currently in the process of moving so updates might be a bit jumbled, but you do get one.^^  
> One of my good friend, a corporal queen of sorts, suggested to me that Tamao would be able to see the future and at least ask about her marks. And that was a great idea. So she did! Although it was not as comforting as she'd hoped.


	4. One for All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To lose; to see; to focus.

It probably should hurt to see Luchist again. He wears long sleeves but they ride up his wrists, and she sees it, clear as day in the opening ceremony. His mark is flared.

She remembers his words. Can put together who is the one who said them, in this world where destiny is apparently a mad house.

It doesn’t make sense at all. How can Hao be his soulmate? She’s seen enough camera footage of the two of them together to know there is nothing romantic there, which is somewhat of a relief because she really really doesn’t want to think about it like that. But then what does that mean? What does anything mean? Should she worry about the fact that Luchist has his mark and nobody in her team has hers? Do they? Are they supposed to be with her? Should she tell them all to leave? Should she ask them?

She doesn’t. It feels too much like stepping into the sea.

What does this mean?

One thing for sure. The words do not matter. They can’t matter, after this.

ꙮ

Now that the Shaman Fight is happening properly, Tamao sees many marks.

Yoh’s on his chest, flared. Anna’s on the back of her neck, flared. Ryu has many, covering his arms, some flared, some unflared. Yoh’s words lit one up, he explains as they’re cleaning up the kitchen. Tamao has to admit it’s a bit overwhelming. He has so many marks and he hasn’t settled down with any of these people.

But he seems happy. She tries to ask, but he just gets loud and confusing, and Tamao is too uncomfortable with her marks to force it.

Horo-Horo’s mark is apparently a source of shame to him. It’s right there on his face, and it is flared, and he stumbles over his words when he has to explain. Yoh smiles his usual smile and says it’s pretty funny. Ren lords it over him, and it takes Tamao an embarrassingly long time to realize why.

Tao Ren, himself, is very adamant that he does not have any. She isn’t sure she believes him.

ꙮ

As the tournament opens the marks become entirely irrelevant. He has one aim and it is to win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now you're caught up with the French version! I'm chipping at the next chapter but the moving process is happening right now, so I'm not sure when and how I'll be able to continue. ^^  
> As always, comments feed me, and make the fic better.


	5. Freeze your brain (and say your goodbyes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To kill; to long; to rest.
> 
> Or: Jeanne has a panic attack, Tamao feels very alone, and Hao doesn't have half the bad time he thought he would.

She doesn’t have time to process it, not really. They are not here to dawdle; they are here to board the Patch plane. So they hang back, in the far recesses of the American base that her people take to like fishes to the water, and wait.

And wait.

Because, though people are slowly boarding the plane, Hao hasn’t. He is, apparently, wandering aimlessly around the base, nicking food left and right, threatening children. Every soldier on the team knows in their bones that boarding before him would be equivalent to drawing a bull’s eye on them, the plane, and everyone in it.

So they wait.

And wait.

Marco speculates that he’s noticed and is waiting them out and Jeanne wishes he hadn’t because now she thinks it too. They have to board soon or they’ll miss the plane. He does, too. So why is he still not boarding the plane?

While she can’t see her men she knows they are fidgeting. The energy around is restless, waves on a fitful ocean, and she cannot help but feel like she is drowning in it.

Complex thought is always difficult in the Iron Maiden. Her people are talking and she should listen, but it grows more difficult with each passing second. The sea rises and the pain takes a backseat to the weight on her chest, the swell of thoughts in her head.

Hao knows they’re here. Hao is waiting them out. Hao is toying with them, and he’s so close, she saw Luchist with her own two eyes. Everything is suddenly too close. They are here and the tournament is here and she has

No

Idea

What she’s doing.

Luchist bears Hao’s words.

Fear washes over her and she tumbles under its tidal wave.

The Iron Maiden no longer feels like a seat of power, a tool, a throne. It feels like a hiding spot. A terrible one. She is hidden but in plain sight, and vulnerable. Chained up, literally; any confrontation would have her start slow. And she suddenly knows all too well how good metal is at heating up.

She is shivering even as heat flashes through her. Breathing is difficult; her chest is full of coal and cannot for the life of her expand. Something deep inside clamors to scratch the walls of her prison, burst out, take off for once and for all.

It is not too late to stop the train, twinkle in the treacherous thoughts. She could still jump off. Could still run.

But as the fear continues to ravage her insides she knows it is. There is no escape from the chains and the blood and the fight. There is nowhere else to go. She is dying and she is dying now, by herself, before Hao even gets to –

This doesn’t make sense, Shamash cuts through, and forces her to step back. It is strange, an out of body experience, to think of the Iron Maiden in the middle of her team, and then further out, the base, Tokyo, Japan.

From all the way up there her emotions coalesce into candles. The air of the base is full of volatile oxygen, and she can see them flaring beyond her control. Fear, betrayal, incomprehension, fear, fear.

No.

Just candles.

Breathing out she focuses on visualizing the candles, on gently tapering their flames. Shamash helps her. One by one, she snuffs them, and the waves associated gently recede. As the last candle goes dark she focuses on her hand, on feeling it fully, and refuses to think of anything else.

She is holding it in the space between the pain, and focuses.

“Marco,” she says at length, when she feels nothing anymore. “We should board.”

And they do.

…

As they board she hears someone snarking about Marco’s ‘weird baggage’, and there’s almost a fight. But it’s only almost a fight, and they board, and her candles stay dark.

As the plane takes off, she focuses on her hand.

ꙮ

The day after Yoh leaves for the Shaman Fight, Tamao cleans up his room. She dusts off his things, lets the air in, and makes sure no spirit is mucking it up in there. She may end up doing it a tad more often than necessary, but it helps, somehow. As if she were doing something for him, even though he’s gone.

Once she is done she wanders downstairs. Anna is watching a new series, exactly like she was yesterday. Like nothing changed. Like…

Anna looks up.

“Do you need something?”

Tamao freezes, then blushes. What could she say?

_How are you so calm? Don’t you miss him? Aren’t you worried?_

She can’t say any of that. Instead she fumbles.

“I… I just wondered. How you felt. If you are, you know… okay?”

Anna stares at her with this blank expression she so often has, and Tamao feels her hands tightening over her notebook. She shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not her place. Yoh isn’t hers. Yoh isn’t even on her skin.

And as she crumbles into excuses she watches Anna quietly run a hand across the back of her neck, where her words are. She has never read them but she knows they are Yoh’s.

“Tamao, he’s fine. I would know, otherwise,” Anna says, and Tamao can only nod and scamper off.

Can she really tell just by her mark? It did not look like a simple body movement. It looked like Anna really… really found an answer by touching it. Like there was a thread connecting her to Yoh.

With a sigh, she sits out on the porch and rubs at her ankles. On impulse, she draws up a pant leg, the one with the Japanese on it. Would it…?

No. The words are lukewarm and quiet.

Is it selfish to feel so alone?

ꙮ

So.

He’s met Yoh.

And Yoh is everything he wanted and nothing he wanted. He found him eating fast food on the ground of the Patch’s little plane festival, idly listening to his friends. The boy is surrounded by ‘friends’.

A child, really. He supposes he could not expect otherwise.

A marked child. He hasn’t seen it immediately, but the boy isn’t trying to hide it, and leaves his shirt open. Flared, then, and not by him, he can tell.

He isn’t miffed by it. Not at all. He prefers it that way.

He still lets an ear or two wander and catches the name of ‘Anna’. His brother’s fiancée. How quaint. He’ll have to meet her at some point, no doubt. It would be good manners to apologize for eating her betrothed.

As he finally boards the plane, almost full by that point, the chaos of so many thought processes at once hits him. Young teens, adults of all stripes, one or two children who really shouldn’t be here, all screaming at him. Ah, yes. He has twelve hours of that to look forward to.

His eyes fly by the group of soldiers standing very straight at the front of the plane. They’re far from him, and yet they manage to be among the loudest on this dreadful machine. He can hear the murder fantasies from all the way over where he sits, and that’s almost better than some of the _other_ thoughts he captures.

For every hour spent on this plane he will kill one of them, he decides. Not a very magnanimous thought, but he isn’t trying to be. It will be just desserts for those who allow themselves to be so loud. His head is already killing him and they’ve barely left the ground.

Except instead of the headache setting in as time goes by, he feels… nothing. A numbness spreads over his thoughts. He still hears the words, still senses the conversations, but as if through a wall.

It is an uncomfortable sensation because it is unfamiliar, and it is also strangely pained. But it is new, and mute, and much more bearable than the chaos of the plane. Cautiously, Hao lets himself bask in the sensation, and relaxes.

One question remains.

Why do all his thoughts focus on his hand?


	6. Mercy by any other name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To protect; to freeze; to care.

They have taken shelter in one of the higher buildings of Mesa Verde. Intel says Hao’s group is hovering, and they want to know why, and hopefully intervene before they slaughter more innocents.

John and his team survey the area. As they wait for them, Marco and the rest are discussing potential leads around a table that may, at some point, have been round.

Now it’s just broken.

Jeanne sits among them, her dress covering each inch of her skin that isn’t hand or face. The heat is affecting her, a little, but she doesn’t admit it.

Under the table she has her thumbs in vices and absently she tightens them. She’s found it helps keeping her candles dark. Gives her something to balance the void on.

"There is this," Kevin admit in that gravelly voice of his. "Some records mention that only complete souls could hope to be crowned Shaman King. It isn’t easy to determine what is meant by ‘complete’. We do not have records of former Shaman King’s skin markings, nor their flared status."

"It could mean a non-marked individual," Marco says doubtfully. "Wouldn’t that be the most ‘complete’ a soul could be? No impurity, no reliance on other souls."

"That is an idea."

"Making our Holy Maiden the ideal candidate."

They glance at Jeanne who smiles dutifully. It isn’t only her marks she has learned to hide. She hopes, behind her smile, that they are wrong.

"Let us not be hasty," she reminds them. The topic does worry her now that she is aware of it. Another sign that this is a complete travesty. Another sign that she should not lead them. "Is that your working hypothesis, Kevin?"

"There are other possibilities. It could reflect the state of someone fully flared, or someone with a mutual bond, or, more worryingly, someone who had absorbed their soul partners."

"Oh." It’s Christopher who lets out the sound, but Jeanne feels like it came from her. They all know of one person who has consistently been absorbing souls. If that is what he is doing, then...

"That can’t be," Marco interrupts. "It would be properly monstrous to base the requirements around that. The tournament is not about finding the worst monster alive."

Isn’t it, though? Jeanne wonders and says nothing.

The silence then is long.

"In any case," Meene finally says, "it would probably be a good idea to try and track down Asakura Hao’s partners."

They know he has at least one. Hao doesn’t care about hiding, and they’ve caught sight of his naked arms at least once.

Jeanne wonders what that would be like. To be bound to a beast; to know that somehow destiny –

That wouldn’t mean anything, she instantly knows, and it’s a rebellious thought. Luchist said that destiny was a choice. That the words were a door but you still had to turn the handle and step through. He stepped through. He made his choice and the silver on his hand did not force him to.

She still feels the frustrating desire to understand. To have it make sense, even as she shushes her candles again and again.

"Do we know if he is flared?"

Her question surprises even her, and everyone turns to look at her again. "It would let us know if he has made contact," she continues, when she feels the need to explain.

Kevin rifles through his files. "We can’t be sure we know of all his marks." And isn’t that further proof of his degeneracies, is thought but not said. To have so many different people etched on her skin. Jeanne has heard Marco and John when they were scoping out people at the base; one man apparently had so many the color of his arms was functionally black-and-gold, and they shuddered at the thought.

She doesn’t think of her shoulders, because she doesn’t have marks, see?

"But of those that we’ve seen, none was flared," Kevin continues. He looks at her curiously, as if about to ask her for her thoughts, but he doesn’t. It would be too direct.

"If we locate one such partner," Meene says, with the practicality of a soldier, "what should be our protocol? If they are key to the throne –

"Such taint could not be tolerated," Marco immediately says. "Even the partners themselves would understand and would demand it of us. A quick, quiet execution would be mercy."

Jeanne glances at him. He isn’t looking at her. His fists are tight and it takes Meene’s quiet touch, through gloves, to quiet his energy. They don’t speak, but for a second it looks like they do, and Jeanne wonders how it feels to have the confidence it takes to reach out and touch Marco.

She thinks of the silver on Luchist’s wrist. She looks at Marco, who is silent and sullen. She knows he doesn’t like the concept of marks and partners and siblings-from-another-mother. It is too subjective, too emotional for he who likes to dwell in black and white. Is that why he hasn’t connected the dots?

She has. She could say it. It’s not like they plan on sparing him anyway.

She doesn’t say it.

A secret for a secret.

ꙮ

“I can show you around here.”

Everything is happening too fast.

They just landed on American soil and there was a lot to take in: the heat, the colors, the sheer… expanse of world that is nothing like she is used to. But Tamao didn’t have any time to process it, because already someone has found them.

That someone, it appears, is Hao.

She watches in the sidelines as Anna talks to him. Well, is talked to by him.

He’s not – he’s not like she expected him to be. In the paintings at home he always looks sullen, dark, ancient. The boy who stands so close to Anna is young and he smiles and it almost looks like Yoh, except it looks nothing like Yoh.

Tamao can’t feel her legs. She’s not sure what she would do if things escalate – there’s Manta and his employee to watch out for, but she wouldn’t leave Anna – she wouldn’t… She holds her hands against her mouth and stands stock still. She can’t speak.

It doesn’t exactly feel like fear. It’s more like waiting for a breath that refuses to come.

“I’m so very glad to meet you, Anna. The new mistress of my shikigami and the bearer of Yoh’s mark! Quite the combination.”

Anna is so brave. Tamao doesn’t know how she’s so unabashedly hostile. She stands her ground, talks to him like he’s not the monster Yohmei told them about. (Admittedly, he doesn’t look like one, though the air is heavy with power).

“But do ask if you need help. I’m always available,” he says, and it sounds like _flirting_ , and how is this happening?

Anna, predictably, lashes out.

Hao, unpredictably, catches her hand.

Tamao stifles a scream as he leans over her, caging her against rock. “Oh, really? Well, that’s not very inspired,” he muses, and it takes her a second to realize he’s talking about Anna’s mark. The one she’s never read.

“That is really none of your business,” Anna hisses.

“Ah, my bad. I see that you like it. I wonder if it will transfer when I absorb his soul… Or if I will have yours on me, then. After all, you are meant to be the Shaman King’s wife. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Whatever is holding Tamao immobile suddenly lifts, and she takes a single step. She wants to say something, though she doesn’t know what. She will say something. Help Anna.

As if he heard, Hao turns, and looks at her. She freezes again. It still doesn’t feel like fear. It feels like the world itself is holding its breath, and her legs feel numb, and…

And Anna backhands him with violence Tamao has never seen her unleash on Yoh.

“Of course I’ll be the Shaman King’s wife. Yoh is sure to win. Come on, Tamao, Manta, we don’t have any time to waste.”

And Tamao doesn’t let herself look back.

ꙮ

Nothing is going the way it should.

_Don’t engage_ , Hao said. _Your job is simply to watch. I trust you to gauge Yoh’s level accurately_.

Except no one seems to have the braincells necessary to do as he asked!

Boris and Damayaji were meant to act together. Try Yoh, try his _friends_ , kill the weak, kill any other Shaman trying to go through. Simple enough.

But somehow the little group of teenagers gets Boris riled up. They imply that Damayaji is twice the vampire Boris could ever be (and they’re right) and Ashil sees in slow-motion the moment where Boris loses it.

To be fair, it has been a long time coming. To be fair, he has always hated being ribbed on for his mark, for having a little nobody as a soulmate. To be fair, how does it look, really, for the heir of the infamous Vlad the Impaler to be tied by a mutual bond with someone like Damayaji? To be fair, they hated each other’s guts, hated having the same (atrocious) tastes, hated finishing each other’s sentences, hated, hated, hated.

Ashil doesn’t care about fair. What Boris does next is overdramatic and completely unnecessary.

And to make this worse, the moment Boris stabs Yamada, he clutches at his chest, gasps like a buffoon or a fish out of water. They _both_ fall to the ground like limp noodles. And Boris. Doesn’t. Get. Up.

For a second, Ashil is as flabbergasted as the teenage boys below their observation spot. How did that happen? Why is Boris on the floor? What...?

None of that matters, he remembers a second after all of that.

“If you want something done well, you better do it yourself,” he sneers. Zang-Ching tries to hold him back, but he’s already jumped into the fray.

Siegfried lands and blooms under his feet, and he grins at the idiots below. “I’ll be your opponent!”

He cannot let them humiliate Hao like this. If Boris cannot be trusted to do his work correctly, he will. He has the power. He’s sized all of them up, the Tao heir and the green-haired boy and the barely-Shaman and of course Yoh. He’s not afraid. He will kill all of Yoh’s little companions, and, well, if Yoh interferes –

The green-haired boy jumps to meet his first hit with a yell. A straight-up yell.

“I don’t care,” he roars. “I’ll go through all of you if I need to!”

And then the green-haired boy attacks, but Ashil doesn’t parry. He doesn’t parry because at the brat’s words his shoulder burst to life. Instinctively, he grips his arm and stumbles back, biting in a yell.

To anyone else, it might look like his opponent landed a hit. But he knows. And the other boy knows his pendulum actually swung large. He knows.

Fury engulfs Ashil like a ball of fire. “You,” he spits, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

Siegfried follows his commands, stomping brutally up to his opponent. His first blows miss; the boy is fast, as fast as his wire. But as he takes the time to wrap it around Siegfried’s legs to shatter them (which they do, and it does not matter. They exist again in the very next moment), Siegfried’s giant limbs backhand him right into the side of the mountain.

“Lyserg!”

There is a flash of hurt in Ashil’s shoulder and it combusts into white-hot anger. He wants the boy dead. He wants –

“Hey, you! Stop! We won’t let you hurt Lyserg!”

Yoh. Yoh and his friends are attacking from behind, trying desperately to distract him from his task. And if he was looking for an excuse to maim, to incapacitate, to kill the boy Hao is so interested in – here it is. He only has to take it.

Ashil doesn’t take it. Siegfried lets the blows slice through him like butter and continues to march on Lyserg. He has one goal and one goal only.

“That’s enough.”

Even in his fury Ashil hears him. Ashil would hear him in the middle of a thunderstorm, in the darkest of oceans, in the void of space.

Siegfried launches him in the air, and then he is caught by Hao, as he always is. His master’s power deposits him safely in the boiling palm of fire.

“Well, what happened here?”

Ashil straightens up, but one of the boys is faster. “Your stupid vampire-wannabe minions came at us, that’s what! And then one stabbed the other and your two clowns fell right over!”

“Boris is not dead,” Ashil adds in a whisper. He hadn’t noticed before, but his furyoku is a dead ringer. Boris is actually preparing to stand, though he stays immobile and silent for now. “But he wouldn’t do as you asked and I –

“You did good, Ashil. Now, Boris, are you going to sleep much longer?”

As if by magic, the vampire stands. He seems disorientated and weak and it makes Ashil sick.

“Master Hao. My apologies.”

“None necessary. Now, do your job, will you? Ashil and I have other matters to attend to.”

Ashil swallows wrong and half-suffocates. Ashil and I. It’s so sweet he almost forgets his anger.

…

They move away from the boy who wrote _I don’t care_ in Ashil’s arm, and Hao ponders.

Spirit of Fire towers over the ruined buildings of Mesa Velde. Now that he has formally met Yoh and his delightful fiancée, perhaps he should give a good scare to Luchist’s former pack. He can sense their gazes on him from where they hide. But… no. It will be time soon enough.

Instead his mind wanders to the silent girl who stood with Anna. The way she stood, the twin spirits, he can smell some Mikihisa on her. And yet, such a quiet signature. Either she hid it very well, or Anna was really the only Shaman of note in that little group. Isn’t that strange?

Their presence was not planned, he reminds himself. Perhaps they had no one else to escort his precious book. Still, to send the entire future of the bloodline doesn’t strike him as especially sound.

“Master... I apologize for my outburst,” Ashil pipes up at his side. “I got carried away.”

“You did,” Hao acknowledges, without passing judgment. “I thought you had no interest in the marks.”

“I don’t! Of course I don’t!”

“So?”

“So that boy... He’s got no right! How dare he? I don’t want a connection to him. I don’t want someone else.”

That is, and has been as long as they have known each other, the truth. But there is something else, and Hao wants to tug it out of the boy.

“You know I don’t care. Why so angry?”

There is a long pause as Ashil puts into words why he needed Lyserg dead immediately.

“I don’t want to be weak,” he says, at length, his cheeks slightly greener than they should be.

“Oh?”

“Especially after what happened to Boris! I don’t want to be in the middle of a fight and incapacitated because I or you or someone else kills him. I want him to be dead now so he’s not – so I’m not...” A liability. He doesn’t say that, but Hao hears it anyway. And suddenly he wonders about that, too.

His wrists are not flared, but at least one of the sentences implies he will face them on the battlefield. And then – and then what? What if they burn, what if they die, what if someone else realizes...

“You’re right,” Hao says after a beat. He hadn’t thought about that. He hasn’t _wanted_ to think about that, to care about that. And he has no idea when his own marks will flare. At least one of them he will meet in battle. And then…

"Ashil."

"Y-yes?"

"Have I commanded you for your wits, lately?"

It’s a trick question because Hao never has. It still makes Ashil go beet red and he stammers. Hao didn’t expect otherwise, but he still grins.

"You are most right – it would not do to find out something like that in the arena. I think we need to do some experiments."

He knows that ‘we’ will undo the boy, but considers it a small mercy. It will distract Ashil from his flared mark. And it will give him something to think of instead of the silent Asakura girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took a little more time! The moving process is taking its toll.  
> Hao is finally starting to think about what might happen to him! And Ashil doesn't die, because I'm the writer here and I say so.  
> Also, second half-meeting!


	7. Home is where the heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To choose; to see; to see.

Lyserg, for almost as long as he remembers, has worn a veil under his eyes. He is a lot less open about that than he is about his pants, and even when he stumbles into Marco half-sick from seeing the Great Spirits the veil is still in place.

(Marco won’t tell him that the only way the X-Laws could reach the Patch Village without fainting was by staring at the ground and listening to their Holy Maiden’s directions. She alone stared it down; she alone guided their path. What she saw or went through, she didn’t say.)

They talk, and the more they talk the more Lyserg is convinced this is where he needs to be. This is the people who will destroy Hao and save the world. He needs to be there with them, though he thinks of Yoh with regret. They talk of justice and beasts and the greater good; they talk of the pain and the fire and the ones they lost.

Marco grills him for what feels like hours before mentioning her. The Lady. The stone upon which their church is built. He who speaks so openly about what must be done to Hao and his followers suddenly becomes mysterious and almost cagey. Gives him _time to think_.

He takes the time to think, alone. Marco said his parents would be proud of him for making it this far alone, and it’s the nicest thing Lyserg has ever heard. And now he doesn’t have to be. He can rely on other people again. People who understand.

He could go to Yoh. He’s not hard to find. But Yoh doesn’t understand him at all.

So he goes where he knows his place is, and Marco smiles, and the pride on his face is bittersweet and familiar.

“Meene will take you to her.”

A woman steps up and greets Lyserg with a nod. She looks young, but when she walks she walks like the others; there is a rigidity, a strength in her, like a bow ready for the arrow. He wishes he were like that.

Marco waves them off with a smile and Meene guides him into a brightly-lit corridor. Lyserg is too nervous to speak. Soon they reach a door and she gestures for him to go through. The Lady, whoever, whatever that is, is waiting for him in here. But what if she doesn’t like him? What if she tells him to leave?

He feels so nervous he might be sick again, so he stalls. “Can… Can you tell me about her a little? The Holy Maiden?”

The woman hesitates a little, then says: “She will save the world.”

And Lyserg’s right cheek flares in moonlight. It flashes through the veil and Lyserg is too taken aback not to grab his cheek, shellshocked. He stutters, Meene takes a step back, they both clearly do not know what to say.

“I, I’m sorry,” Lyserg mumbles. Then, because Meene is still staring and he feels terrible, he repeats, “sorry,” and pushes the door to scramble into the room.

…

He is pushed into the chapel and almost stumbles. Hidden in the confessional, Jeanne watches in silence as he takes hesitant, trembling steps. The way his eyes travel, he has not been in a church for a long time.

Not seeing her, clearly at a loss, the boy kneels in between the rows of pews. She hears the feverish mumblings of half-remembered prayers. It reeks of helplessness and desperation.

Slowly, she stands. Her steel-lined steps echo in the room as she makes her way to him and kneels in turn.

He has fallen silent, so she takes the rosary from around her neck and puts it between them.

She signs herself and he does the same, a little hesitantly; then she says “O Lord, open my lips,” and he repeats, a little off-key. The creed, the Lord’s prayer, and then the Hail Marys; the repetition helps him remember, or learn, the words.

But there is also something else. After all, her angels come from every corner of the world and every sort of church. It is not bad that he would not know her words. But in prayer Jeanne finds peace; in prayer she soothes herself and brings her candles low. Repetition rekindles belief, and she wants to help this lost boy.

Once they have gone through the whole rosary, his voice has gained in confidence. Not enough to ask questions. Perhaps enough to answer them?

“You have come very far,” she starts in the silence.

“I made my way to Tokyo alone. I saw M… the organization a few times after. But it took until now for me to find my resolve.”

His voice shakes, still. He is ashamed of how long it took for him to come here. Like he owes her for lost time.

“Doubts are the stepping stones of our faith. Once they are behind you, they have served their purpose.”

“I have cast them aside,” he promises fervently. “I am ready. I believe.”

“What do you believe?”

The boy barely dares look at her, but this time he does, innocent green eyes boring into the red.

“That you are the only one who can kill Hao and save the world.”

_And_ is such an ambiguous word, isn’t it? Is killing the beast separate from saving the world? Or is it one and the same? But he says it so fervently. _This_ is his prayer.

“What makes you believe that?”

He chuckles. He is so very nervous.

When he tears his veil off his face Jeanne doesn’t know what to expect, and seeing marks so close for the first time in forever almost makes her recoil.

Half of his face is bathed in silver; half in gold.

“My face says you will,” he says candidly. “I was coming here when one of your soldiers – I apologize, I did not catch her name – she said you would save the world. And there it is.” And there it is: on his cheek, _she will save the world_.

If she hadn’t just decided the marks were nonsense and destiny meant nothing if you didn’t choose it, would her chest flutter? Is this something she should treasure? Shouldn’t she be happy to read her destiny on someone else’s skin? Isn’t it a blessing, this boy, clearly chosen?

She has the instinct to reach out, to touch. The boy watches her with barely-hidden shame, and it interrupts her.

Hand between them, she glances at his other cheek, at the golden mark there. It isn’t in English. It is… It is in an alphabet that reminds her of her own marks, the ones she doesn’t have. “What does the other one say?”

“It’s…” He falters. He is still holding the veil; Jeanne sees him squeeze it like it is its own kind of beast. Is it someone he lost? Marco hasn’t briefed her; she wanted to make up her own mind. It would hurt, she knows, to have and to lose. Even unmarked. Perhaps it is why he arrived at their door.

Gently, she takes the veil from him and unfolds it. That he would wear this; isn’t it a sign of how much he is like them?

“Here who you are ceases to matter,” she explains as she ties it back in place. She is careful not to snag his hair, and to not stand too close to him, even if she kind of has to. “You do not have to tell me. Our purpose is only to slay the beast and save the world.”

“It’s Hao.”

She stops, her fingers still against the mess of his hair. What did he say?

“My other mark,” he blurts out. “I came out flared. He killed my parents on my sixth birthday, I saw part of it – he told me something, I didn’t understand. Later I… I researched it. Spent hours at the library, asked people.”

She still cannot speak. In her mind’s eye, another mark, black then silver. _Come with me_.

“It says, ‘how pathetic’. He’d just killed my parents and he insulted them to my face.” The boy is growing frantic again. He is blinking away tears and not doing very well. “How dare he. How dare he mark me like that. I hate it. I’ve always hated it. It would have been better if he just burned my face off. Please let me help. Please, I need to do this, I have to do this.”

The boy melts into a puddle of angry tears in her lap, and Jeanne’s fingers cannot hold the mask any longer. Her candles flare as she remembers Luchist’s patient smiles and sweet songs and long black cape.

She knows how this ends. She knows he is a traitor. Luchist was only flared silver, wasn’t he? How could he not be a traitor, he who flashed gold for _Hao_?

“Please,” the child begs, and Jeanne does not have the heart for this.

“What is your name?”

“Lyserg. L-Lyserg Diethel.”

She slides the rosary around his head and offers him her hands to stand.

“Rise, Lyserg Diethel. Welcome to the X-Laws.”

ꙮ

“That guy was terrifying! Don’t you think, Tamao, that it was really scary?”

Tamao isn’t sure why, but to have Manta half-yell it soothes her. That was it, then, the feeling when he was there. Fear. She thought it less familiar, but it had to be that, didn’t it?

They are hiking through the mess of houses inside the mountain. Anna doesn’t want to waste any more time, and she is walking at a very brisk pace. She enrolled Tamurazaki to walk by her in case ‘any more creeps come around’, but Manta can’t maintain their pace, so Tamao hangs back with him.

“I couldn’t move I was so scared. But you weren’t, were you, Tamao? You were fearless!”

She frowns. So, not fear? Now she is unsettled again.

“W-was I? I was really worried for Anna,” she counters softly. It quiets Manta; for a while he doesn’t speak.

Part of Tamao feels sheepish. How could she pretend to protect Anna? She’s not the one who tamed the shikigamis. She’s not the powerful itako trained by Kino. She can’t _protect_ anyone. But she would have. She was about to.

“I know what you mean,” Manta says, at length. “I worry for Yoh all the time.”

Tamao blinks and looks at him, walking behind her with sweat on his brow. He is staring at the ground.

“When I met him one of the first things he did was stand up to a whole lot of bullies. Well, they got better, but they were really mean at first. And he keeps – getting hurt. Just to show the people who hurt him that he’s listening. That he’s ready to help. It’s good and he’s great but… He still gets hit. I wish I could do something for him. Because it’s only gotten worse now! And he has nobody to look out for him.”

Tamao understands. More than that, she… feels understood. Because Anna and Yoh have each other but it’s not exactly _looking out_. It’s trust, and trust sometimes means to not look out.

“He has you,” she says. She’s glad he is there.

And she wants, she so desperately wants to believe him when he grins and says: “And Anna has you. You and I – we’ll do the looking out for them. Deal?”

Too embarrassed for words, Tamao nods.

Then, she calls: “Anna! We should take a break! Manta is getting dehydrated!”

Manta is, yes, but she also worries about Anna. She is so worried about Yoh she doesn’t think of herself, so someone has to. And though the itako protests they do stop. Tamurazaki has seen to their needs; they share crackers and they drink aplenty.

Anna is still anxious to move, but Tamao is happy to see that she rests, even for a few moments. As Tamurazaki marvels about the confusing architecture around them, she even manages to convince her to put more sunblock on. It is good to see that Anna listens; good to see that she accepts the help. Tamao hopes that one day, her own soulmate (soulmates?) do the same.

“You could ask, you know,” Ponchi says.

“We’d answer,” Conchi continues, with his usual grin.

But she doesn’t feel the need to. She knows she will meet them (both of them?) in time. Right now… Right now, she feels like she is right where she needs to be.

The world shifts then.

She is looking up, up to something impossible and exquisite. There is an arm stretched out towards it and it is her own, though it is not her own. And as she looks up to this beautiful and terrifying tower that melts and shifts and lives above it all, a tide of joy washes over her.

“Great Spirits,” she says with her real mouth in her real body, though it is not her voice, and it is not her words. “I missed you.”

She does not understand what she is saying. All she understands is the overwhelming joy, painted in dark, possessive hues into her heart.

“You will be mine,” gets out of her throat, and it is the absolute truth: it is hers, already, has always been hers.

…

“Tamao.”

She blinks, and the vision fades. She is indeed looking up at the sweltering sky, high above the cramped buildings of Mesa Velde.

In front of her face is Mikihisa’s mask.

He is holding the hand she still has outstretched towards the sky and cradling it like he’s afraid she’s about to turn to ashes.

When he sees that she is looking back at him he squeezes her hand, and then presses something to her lips. “Heatstroke. Drink.”

So she does. Anna huffs somewhere nearby.

“Really, like we had any more time to waste…”

But Tamao knows she worried. Anna stuck around; she didn’t walk ahead, even though she is so very worried for Yoh.

She sits up and shakes the gravel from her hair. “I’m sorry…”

“That’s fine. Drink your water.”

Manta and Tamurazaki are looking on, equally worried. She tries to comfort them with a smile; it doesn’t seem to convince them much. She doesn’t like being the center of attention like this.

Once she has eaten a few more crackers and drunk some water, Manta attempts:

“Do you think that was heatstroke? We may want to be more careful…”

“It wasn’t heatstroke.” Anna is tapping her foot. “What did you see?”

Tamao glances at her tablet. It was put away, because she had said _no_ to her spirits. She didn’t look into the future. It didn’t feel like the future.

“I didn’t really see anything,” she says quietly, glancing at Mikihisa’s mask. “I don’t remember what happened.”

The mask is inclined in her direction. But who could say what Mikihisa is thinking?

“Then we should go. This place is only going to get worse before it gets better.”

He helps her to her feet and dusts her off. He hasn’t explained why he’s here.

They go.

ꙮ

While he did promise Ashil experiments, the excitement of the Patch Village does push these back a little. Simply being there again fills him with joy. It is _where he should be_ , and for a hot second he thinks about simply striding there and staking his claim. He could stand at the entrance of the village and slaughter every contestant that arrives. If there is no one to _contest_ , the whole farce can be done, can it not?

But no. He will do it the proper way. Show them that he can, of course he can.

After basking in the lights of the Great Spirits for far too long, he signs them all up. Four teams, then.

Hoshigumi. _The Stars_. Because what else? Opacho with him, he will not risk the littlest lamb. And Luchist, because he is simply the strongest, and because he is the closest to anything like understanding. He doesn’t need anyone to fight with him, but those are his stars, for now.

Tsuchigumi. _The Earth_. Peyote and the two monks. There would not be any separating of the Boz, and Peyote needs his own containment unit.

Hanagumi. _The Flowers_. There was never any question about his three girls being together. They are good to each other and they are _good_. He expects a lot more coherency from these three; fewer surprises, however.

Which leaves five men. Well. Four, and Ashil.

He had his mind made up before strolling into the Patch’s office, of course, but he didn’t begrudge them the little row there. They are all somewhat strong, and they all want to fight for him. They would all make good fighters.

In the end he keeps Blocken and Bill on the sidelines, because they will be better at what needs doing outside of the arena. He needs level-minded people to keep watch at the base, and round up new souls for the devouring. If anyone else is weak enough to let opponents escape, they won’t miss their opportunity.

So.

Tsukigumi, _The Moon_. Turbein, Zang-Ching, Ashil.

It’s not exactly on purpose, but he is glad that most of his marked are with their markers. Ashil’s words are in the back of his mind, now. And something else; something that refuses to leave, even if he didn’t invite it in.

Which means it is high time to experiment.

…

A shame, really, that they lost Dayamaji and Boris just before this. Hao scours his mind and the others volunteer their memories, but no, they did not seem to suffer when the other was hurt. Then again, they often trained opposite each other, and neither ever really won.

They do have Mathilda and Marion, though. It isn’t easy to convince Marion to admit to pain. She is like a cat that way. But they don’t have to; Hao just sits near her on the side while Ashil and Mathilda duke it out.

They are somewhat evenly matched and even if the goal is to test their hypothesizes Mathilda isn’t about to take it without a fight. For a moment they watch as the two run around their playground with more and more intensity, swerving, hitting, dancing almost.

Then Mathilda knocks Ashil off of Siegfried and goes at him with her fists. He stomps on her fingers. She elbows him in the face. He sends her into a wall.

It’s only at that one that Marion squeezes Chuck, and he senses that the words scrawled on her thigh throb painfully. “Break,” he calls, and the two little spitfires stop.

They come to him arguing. “Not the face,” Ashil is whining, holding his nose. “We said not the face!”

“Well it wasn’t nice to break my fingers but you don’t see me complaining!”

“Because you aren’t complaining right now?”

They are both pretty roughed up, but for someone who was just thrown bodily into a wall Mathilda walks better than expected. Her training is showing, Hao thinks, proudly.

“She was disorientated when I went to get her,” Ashil adds, unprompted but dutiful. And he doesn’t say it, but Hao knows that it hurt when he threw the Diethel heir into the mountain. So they are looking at concussion-level injuries, then.

…

They break for dinner and Hao runs his hand through the coals. He is happy with their results so far but he finds himself wondering.

What is in a voice? Ashil never felt his soulmate before he was sparked. And he… heard his words, clear as day, but the line on his wrist is still dark and dull. Why?

Opacho babbles on about all the shamans who made it to the village. Her stream of consciousness provides a cool shade to his own thoughts, and he smiles. At least she doesn’t have to deal with that. She won’t have to worry about _belonging_ to anyone until he’s King and by then he will have that system abolished.

He caresses the promise of fire and his thoughts drift back to the Asakura girls. The one who is half-fated to him and the one who appeared to be, who _thought_ the right words, but didn’t say them. What is it about the voice, then?

His soul certainly heard the words, if that is the requirement. If the reishi wasn’t taken into account when the system was made, he would have expected it to be the other way around; for it to work even though there were no words spoken. But there is something about the act of speaking. Easing a bond into reality.

Or, perhaps, she is not the one who will say these words in a way that matters. Perhaps she could have said them and he wouldn’t have flared.

Interesting questions, he supposes, but for now they are just annoying.

Somewhere on his right, there is movement, and Hao blinks out of his reverie. Luchist, who is teaching Opacho how to read European script, is holding his wrist with a queasy look on his face.

“Luchist?”

“Your hand,” he wheezes.

Hao remembers his hand in the fire.

Spirit of Fire makes it soft and tame again, and he observes the charred skin. It is burned badly, and for anyone else there probably would not be any chance of saving it. But he was so deep in thought he… forgot.

Keeping the hand in the fire, he starts to work on healing it. “My bad. Come here.”

“I was not going to say anything,” Luchist says meekly, and it’s true. He withheld the pain so well. Until he didn’t.

He comes.

While his gloved hand looks intact he is holding it limply, like it did receive the burn; Hao takes it by the fingertips and slowly turns his wrist skyward.

The words are flared a bluish silver but the skin around is scorched near black. Nerves are probably compromised.

“This is your dominant hand.” Hao’s voice is blank.

Luchist stays silent, expects nothing. Pain is a good teacher and they both know it; it is the entire reason Hao fed his own hand to the fire. But now he has an answer he didn’t have before.

Hao taps the wound and pretends not to see the jolt that goes through the man.

“It wouldn’t do to have you wounded for the tournament.”

He heals the burn. Luchist thanks him for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The terrible truth about the cycle of abuse is that you end up being the spoke that drags the next person under.
> 
> Being French and raised half-Italian, Jeanne is Roman Catholic (like Marco). Lyserg probably wouldn’t be, even if his parents were religious. There is something to repetition breeding belief (which is why you should never joke about your lack of self-worth, or about wanting to die, psa lads lasses and lassos) and prayer is often based on rhythms and repetitions. 
> 
> This isn’t the help Lyserg needs, lil Jeanne.
> 
> 2\. I need more Tam&Anna content. The girls deserve to bond. If no one feeds me I'll do it myself.
> 
> 3\. Hao has always said he wanted to break his chains. But is severing connections such a good idea, pal?


	8. Casting blindly towards fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To hurt; to assume; to find.

"I don't like him," Meene says, later.

They are only three around the table this time. Marco, Meene, and her.

Freshly arrived in the Patch Village, they need to sign up as teams. In that, Lyserg is both a blessing and a curse: they never intended to sign in three teams. Christopher and Kevin were supposed to stay on the sidelines, keep an eye on things, run the organization while they fought. Now they could fight. Now they can fight, and they are itching to.

"Chris and Kevin are a solid duo," Meene analyzes quietly. In front of them, stacked and spread hazaphardly, are a pile of reports on their combat capacities, synchronization, Over-Soul realization time, resiliency, and a million other things.

"Christopher has a strong defense and he is resourceful. Kevin is very precise and can take cover behind him when weathering hits. But they are both trained soldiers and the… Lyserg is not."

It is not yet easy for her to call him that, Jeanne sees. They tend to do first names among themselves, a habit Marco started, but it's harder because Lyserg is so new, and also so very different from the rest of them.

Or perhaps it's hard for Meene because of the words on Lyserg's cheek. Her words.

They burn in Jeanne's chest now still. These and the golden ones.

"I don't think they would work well together," Meene finishes.

"There is no other solution," Marco repeats for what must be the tenth time. "John and his team have the best overall coordination, like one brain in three bodies – splitting them up would bring down their efficacy."

"I know." Meene sighs. "I don't like him."

Jeanne turns her screws, slowly. They seem to be at an impasse, and she feels bad for Meene. It is so rare for her to let go of her cold, analytical reading of a situation and admit to her feelings frankly. She who usually hides behind such pretty smiles, who strives so hard to be understood as equally capable and equally strong as the rest of them, even if she is the youngest.

She feels bad for Meene, because though she wishes she did not have to, she is going to hurt her.

"Lyserg Diethel will be in X-I, with you, Marco, and me."

Meene drops her pen. Marco's glasses nearly shatter. "M-my lady?"

In public, they would never behave like this. They usually have a lot more control over themselves. But they're exhausted trying to make this work, trying to think about what's smart, and.

They hadn't thought of that. It is written all over their faces.

"We just met the boy," Marco protests. "He could be weak, or worse, a spy, a coward who will not…"

"I trust you to judge fairly, Marco," she cuts him off. He is the one who introduced Lyserg to her, after all. She looks up at him, stares. "Is he weak?"

He can't hold her gaze. His ears go the slightest bit redder, and he does not reply.

"I can tell this child has great potential."

"But he is a child," Meene interrupts, quietly, and Jeanne knows how much it takes for any one of them to interrupt her. "Not a soldier. This means X-I wouldn't have anyone with… Military expertise…"

She clearly isn't sure she should finish, though Jeanne smiles encouragingly. When nothing comes, she leans in and squeezes Meene's hand, like she has seen her do to Marco countless times. Meene does not relax.

"I know it is not ideal, and I know this seems like a dismissal, but it is not. Meene, you would have your place among the X-I."

"I was not…"

"I know."

Meene is skittish. Jeanne tries hard to make her smile as warm and sweet as it goes before she continues.

"You are both right. We do not know this child nearly enough to decide where he would be most needed. I do not want him to cause any trouble in X-II or X-III. You are a soldier, Meene; you will be able to get along with Christopher and Kevin. You have strong hand-to-hand skills that they lack. In X-I, he may not even have to fight. He will not send us astray."

There has never been any question of Marco not being with her, though she could not, if asked, quite articulate why. It just has not.

The two adults glance at each other, clearly unconvinced. Jeanne watches them share this strange glance where it looks like they speak without words.

"My lady, your word is, of course, law." This is Meene, folding.

Marco, unfolding. "Meene was supposed to be your shield. She sees things I do not." How much this costs him, to admit such things. "This child will not, either. Please, my lady, reconsider…"

Jeanne has considered. Jeanne has considered long and hard the fate of the boy with silver and gold on his cheeks. For once she wants to be in control, to make the choice. Because she's the only one to know about the mark Hao left on him? Yes, that. She will keep his secret. She will give him a choice. The choice Luchist had. The choice she has.

That does not mean she will let him roam unwatched. He will be with her, under her eye, and if she thinks…

He is her responsibility.

"Meene can be my shield outside the arena. On the sand the boy will prove his mettle." Not against Hao, of course. Hao is hers, has always been hers. She cannot expect her angels to help fight the beast. Her teammates will watch from the sidelines, safe and sound.

"This is my decision," she says, _when nothing more comes_. She meets Marco's eyes. "It is final."

And so, it is.

ꙮ

"There's not much to do until Yoh's father returns," Manta sighs.

They take up seats in one of the backstreets of the Patch Village, hoping to avoid attention for a moment. They do not have Oracle Bells but… Anna did not, either, and Hao still tried something.

This place is not without danger, not even for them.

They are both tired to the bone; the seeing of the Great Spirits does not come easy. Manta is sick, several times. Tamao… Tamao is different. There are visions, yes; but they are never painful or queasy. Instead they fill her with more of that strange joy she does not understand. Like something big is coming, and her soul is blooming for it. Except it is not her soul. Except it is.

She has not told anybody. She knows Anna suspects. But she was too focused on Yoh to sit her down and get her to talk. Tamao caught her touching her mark a few times before she finally went ahead.

She does the same, now. Rubbing at her ankles like they are oil lamps. Like they will give her their secrets, if she goes at it the right way.

"I'm going for a walk," Manta finally decides.

Tamao feels her heart clench. He is leaving her alone? Here? She isn't sure that's wise. She isn't sure anything's wise, not even asking what she asks next.

"W-wait, before you move out… Manta, what do you know about our words?"

"Your words?"

"The – well, the marks, you know…"

"Oh! I didn't know you were interested in that."

"Well, I am not, not really, but…" She purses her lips. "I think I would… like to understand Yoh and Anna better. They always seem to be on the same… Wavelength? Like they don't need to talk to understand each other."

"They probably don't."

"What?"

"Well – yeah? It's – okay, the science behind it is still unclear. We have predictive models and studies but the results can be very random. So you know the basic forms?"

"Basic forms?"

He sees that this means no.

"Yeah! So the most basic there is, right, that's the line. A is flared by B but B is not flared by A. That's what Ryû and Yoh have. Usually its effects are really limited. But what Anna and Yoh have – that's a ring form, they are both flared by each other."

"A… ring form."

"Yeah! And ring forms – well, it depends on the couple, but it can be very powerful. _Flared gold in a ring form,_ some people can… feel the other's state of mind. Even across great distance, it's almost like they are still holding each other's hands."

"It's… It's very romantic…"

That's what Anna was doing, back in the house. Holding out her hand for Yoh to grasp. And Yoh did, Yoh has, so many times no doubt.

Manta catches her faraway gaze.

"Yeah. I'm glad for them, you know."

"Is it rare?"

"A bit more than lines, yeah."

Tamao wonders for a moment.

"Is it still a ring if you have more than two people?"

"Ah, no! That would be the wheel form. But we're getting into extra rare territory there. More common is the herringbone, where one person is tied to two different ones. Two lines, if you will, but starting from the same person."

Tamao blinks. A herringbone? Is that what she has? She rubs at her ankle. It would make sense. Perhaps her _careful_ mate is back home in Japan, and the strange writing one is here. Will she have to choose?

"That must cause a lot of trouble…"

"It's not the easiest mark to bear, no! There's a lot of manga that use it for the drama."

Now that he mentions it, she has read some. None of them really went into the marks. It was more of a gimmick to fuel the romantic triangles.

"You know a lot about these things, Manta."

The boy goes still, and Tamao panics. Has she stepped on his toes? She doesn't know him that well, yet.

"I didn't mean to offend you…"

"Ah, well… I was really passionate about it before I met Yoh. You could call it a… side project I was doing for the family."

"Oh, really?"

He tugs at the frayed threads of his sweatshirt. Has he worn anything else since she has known him?

"Yeah, I… I wanted my dad to leave me alone about my lack of marks."

"Oh."

He seems so young, all of a sudden! Not small because of his size, but because of the angle of his back. Tamao did not know it really existed, people without marks. She thought it was something out of a novel. She does not know what to say.

"Don't worry about it! It's a really exciting subject. Did you know the three Unifiers were tied by a common thread? Well, a line. See, Toyotomi Hideyoshi is said to have flared Oda Nobunaga when he was only an ashinaru. And later Toyotomi Hideyoshi was flared by Tokugawa Ieyasu – people think it contributed to their rivalry and explained some of the trust Toyotomi Hideyoshi bore him!"

The words flood the room. Tamao thinks that Manta is doing it on purpose, so she doesn't prod him further. And she lets him.

"I don't remember learning all of that…"

"It's still a matter of speculation. The words have been used in propaganda since the dawn of times. See, legends say Joan of Arc flared basically every other person she met."

She tries to imagine it. Joan of Arc for her is blurry, a young woman on horseback, hands together in prayer. She has Anna's face and a tearful smile on it.

"It was considered proof of her witchcraft – like she'd cheated the system somehow. She herself didn't have any, but everyone marked by her was flared gold. When she burned the entire city fainted, including some of her accusers!"

"F-fainted?"

A city goes up in flames in her head. She shivers.

"Yeah! It seems that when you're flared, intense pain or emotions tend to go through your words from your soulmate. Or your soulmates. Spooky, eh?"

His hands flutter to mimic something that they cannot really mime. Tamao grimaces.

"That… Could be a problem in the tournament…"

"I, I guess, yeah. I mean, Anna never shows it, but… it kind of gives you a new perspective when you know she's part of every training session and every fight."

"I suppose…"

He smiles, then goes still. "Oh, I'm sorry! You're part of it, too, aren't you?"

"What?"

She is confused. When he notices, he stalls, chews on his lips, stutters. "Well I thought… Didn't…" He is now tomato red, unable to do more than mumble. "Didn'tYohflareyou?"

It feels like an ice shower. Of course. Wy would she worry so much, put so much effort into…?

Her face answers for her.

"Oh I'm so sorry! I thought… I thought that was why you and Anna were both at the house. I thought you were a herringbone with them both if not a wheel and – I'm so sorry!"

"That's… that's fine. No, I am not flared. I just have those," and she shows him her ankles, the darkened lines. His eyes widen as he glances at them, then apologizes again.

ꙮ

One month to go. Well, no, not one month. Twenty-five days and a little less than ten hours.

He does not like to feel himself impatient. Impatience makes mistakes, he knows this. Meeting Yoh was one thing, but here? He will not make mistakes.

As the days go by the village fills up with more and more useless shamans. Obstacles on the way to the throne. People he's not at all interested in.

Opachô, however, is very curious. She 'spies', according to herself, and because it makes her happy he doesn't put an end to it. As long as he sends one or two people to trail her, she is safe.

To keep busy he continues his experiments with Luchist and the girls. There's bound to be practical uses to _this_ , if only because a long-distance communication system that is not controlled by the Patch is interesting in itself. So far, however, they have not cracked the code.

He could not say why he throws so much of his time into it. He hates the marks, the randomness of it. He knows how human they are. Maybe he's just bored. Maybe it finally feels like an area of knowledge he doesn't understand fully. It's not shamanism, it is not, but it is… adjacent, perhaps? Tied to the soul, anyway. Even if he said the exact opposite to his little ones.

"Master Hao!"

Speaking of little ones.

Opachô bounds to him with a notebook in hand.

"Where did you find this?"

While it isn't the first time she's ambled away, she doesn't usually bring trophies home.

"On the ground!"

Someone lost it, no doubt. Opachô has already made it hers: there are improbable and colorful drawings on the pages she shows him. He notes some affection for Sâti's elephant, and smiles. Whoever this belonged to is too late; the notebook is Opachô's.

And yet when he asks she lends it to him, and he looks through it with some vague curiosity. The paper is solid, more meant for watercolor than crayon.

It opens on a series of landscapes, sometimes urban, sometimes less. Not bad. Not jaw-dropping, either. It feels like biting into a lemon, somehow.

He is about to hand it back to Opachô – careless is the hand that lost this – when the next page shows a familiar face.

"Oh! That's master Yoh!"

Opachô pushes her head in between his arms and they look through it together.

And it is Yoh. Yoh under a thousand lights, Yoh in a thousand poses. Sketches, mostly, nothing as complete as the landscapes he just saw. Sometimes his fiancée is there too. Less. Some minor spirits. Some faces he does not know. Sometimes notes, scribbles, attempts.

And finally, on the last page, a silhouette that can only be his. Approximative but unmistakable.

And a note.

_Not afraid?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much to say except dramatic irony burns sweetest.
> 
> I hope you liked it! Please tell me what you thought^^


	9. The belonging you seek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To choose; to give; to want.

One more night before the second round.

Just one.

A few precious hours of darkness.

Sense tells her she should be in the Iron Maiden. She should be using every last second to siphon more power from her blood and her suffering. She needs to be more than she is and she knows it.

Instead she is here, on the roof of their lodgings. She has come here by herself, without telling anyone.

The night is full of light here. It doesn't make sense that the stars be so bright, but they are. One could almost draw lines between them. Jeanne guesses at constellations and worlds she will never see. She doesn't know any of their names.

They are beautiful.

Below them stand the Great Spirits, so she looks at them, too. According to Marco, their calling could be felt from the mouth of Mesa Velde. A choir song, from afar, at the edge of hearing. It's like it was written in his blood, how to find them; his soul an infallible compass pointing resolutely to… hell. Her faithful captain heaved and hurled the whole way, talked of nightmares and visions. Not just him: they all desperately want to get out of this place. That is how she got them here; going towards the source of the malady. The great evil. The Great Spirits as an entity, as a concept, sickens them.

And yet… And yet for here it's just there. She doesn't feel anything looking at them. It's not even that beautiful. There are no dreams and no fevers, no whispers of the past or the future. Rutherford told her that her power would make it worse for her, that it would be impossible for her soul to ignore.

But clearly her soul is just fine.

Something is wrong. Something is terribly, horribly wrong. She cannot help but wonder. Did she cut off her emotions that well? Does that mean that her soul is somehow broken? That the Great Spirits is rejecting her? That perhaps, just perhaps, she never had a soul to begin with?

The marks on her arms say she does. But she doesn't have any marks. Lyserg's silver cheek says she does! But Lyserg is marked by evil, too.

Lyserg. She doesn't trust him, yet, doesn't want to, but the boy is growing on her. The idea of him, at least.

She cannot afford to socialize with her soldiers, but she reads the reports. Chris teaches him to wield a gun. Porf explains stillness and patience. Kevin lends him books and he reads them. Lyserg asks after her.

His faith is obvious and absolute.

It is only fair hers should be exactly the same. Burn away the candles, burn away the facts. Destiny means nothing if you do not choose it. He has chosen his. And here, alone in front of something that asks more of her than she can give, she chooses hers.

Standing at the foot of the Great Spirits she, actively, chooses it. Til now she was doing it for Marco, for her men, for all the hours spent saying she would, for all the hours suffering for it. She does not remember what she thought when she stepped into the Iron Maiden for the first time, her skin unblemished and sun-kissed. She doesn't remember how she understood what they wanted from her, what they still want from her. Since she brushed against Hao she has been troubled, uncertain, shaky. The others cannot quite grasp what he is. They are like ants before the magnifying glass. She, well, she is strong enough to sense the extent of the danger. To know what she is fighting.

Here, faced with Lyserg's virgin faith and this monument that refuses to acknowledge her, she chooses it. There is no need to scream, no need to say anything, but it writes itself in her heart like a flash of fire.

As if to answer this call, in the distance, Spirit of Fire rises. It's only now she can properly appreciate what she's heard so much about. How tall he is; how bright. How powerful. A tower of light and strength.

That, too, she chooses. This is where she will be, the third point of the triangle, holding the line. _This is where she should be._

And as the thought shoots through her, this brief flash – the feeling of hands, warm, curled around her shoulders, the ghost of an embrace. Two notes on a piano.

 _There you are_.

As quickly as it comes it disappears, leaving her alone. Was that – was that the Great Spirits? Or is this a power from on high, commanding her on this choice? She couldn't hope to tell.

It feels right.

She chooses this.

ꙮ

It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter.

Try as she might, though, Tamao still feels absolutely horrible about her drawing pad.

Everyone was really kind about it! Ryû and Manta walked down every street in the village with her. They asked shopkeeps; they asked passers-by; they asked spirits. Ryû even went back into the maze of Mesa Velde, just in case she lost it on the way. All of that for nothing. They had to give up after a full day searching for the book.

"We're sorry," Ponchi says.

"We should have watched it better," Conchi continues.

"It's okay," she tells them, even if it's not. "It was my fault."

It is. It's her notebook.

She walks out to the laundry lines carrying a big basket and that is when Ryû appears, a little bag in his hand.

"Here," he says, holding it for her. She cannot quite take it with her hands full and he seems to realize it just a tad too late. They fumble with the basket and the bag, and at length they manage to get the first situated on the porch, and the second in her hands.

"T-thank you," she stutters.

"No worries just… open it," he says, taking the basket and turning his back to her. She hesitates.

"It's not very good," he says, as he hangs a pair of briefs in the entirely wrong way. "They don't have any real drawing stuff here. But I thought…"

"Thank you." As she unwraps the drawing pad and she struggles to breathe. It's thick and it's bound the same way hers was, and she watches Ryû with tears of gratitude in her eyes.

There's no way she can tell him he doesn't know how to do laundry.

"Thank you."

He stops, scratching his head. He can see she's crying, and he's uncomfortable. Stop it! Stop crying!

With a sigh, he comes to her side and pats her head.

"Just… just be careful. With it, alright?"

Tamao freezes.

He's spoken to her before. It's not him. She knows it's not him. She hasn't flared, she knows she hasn't, she is still alone. It's not him.

And yet. And yet.

Does she wish it was him?

"Just be careful," he repeats, and he's off.

…

She is hanging the laundry when she hears a commotion at the front of the house. So, naturally, she sneaks up to the corner. A group all in white is passing in front of the house. The first man is pushing some sort of statue as tall as he is, and the wheels of whatever he is using to push it get stuck in the dirt. That is the commotion.

She doesn't quite understand why she stares unmoving but she does. This is clearly a group of Shamans participating in the tournament, one that is a lot more organized than she is used to seeing. But why lug around a statue so heavy it sinks into the unpaved streets? Two of the men are carefully lifting it out of the hole while the rest stand watch. There is a woman amongst them, as well as a young boy; Tamao doesn't know enough to recognize Lyserg.

The woman catches her eye and shifts, ever so slightly. Tamao ducks behind the corner.

"Is there a problem?"

This voice is female, but too high, she thinks, for the woman she saw. Not loud enough if it were calling out to her. It sounds like someone her age, with an accent that is charmingly strange. She doesn't dare breathe. Something tugs at her navel, something that wants her to move, to peek, to see. She shouldn't, but…

"Nothing of import, Lady Maiden. We are ready to move again."

Tamao peeks out just as the statue's head snaps shut. Snaps shut? _There's somebody in there?_

She stands transfixed by the sight until they disappear down the street. Then, feeling like she was just whacked over the head, she sits down on the porch. Her new notebook is right there but doesn't feel real. She feels faint.

She's so out of it she doesn't realize someone is sitting beside her until she hears: "Hey."

Tamao jumps so high she almost falls right off the porch Yoh, ever quick on his feet, catches her just in time.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you."

"N-no! I'm – This is my fault! I should have paid attention!"

She knows how bright she is flushed right now, and she knows what it must look like, to him, to Anna, to Manta who _knows_. She hates it.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Do you want some?"

He is holding an orange. She nods, and watches him peel it. The smell of citrus chases away the living statue in her head, and leaves only the melancholy associated with sitting next to Yoh.

"I'm sorry for your notebook. I know how much it meant to you."

He doesn't. He can't. He has no idea how often he appears in her pages. But the thought is comforting, and she nods. It's hard to speak.

"I also wanted to say thanks for coming with Anna. It means a lot that she didn't have to make the trip alone."

She blinks. Of course she didn't! Of course she came with Anna. She wouldn't leave her alone. Is this pride? It feels out of place, ugly. So instead, she says: "Manta really wanted to come. He worried for her and for you." A pause. "He's a great friend."

"You're a great friend, too," and the way Yoh says it, fiercely almost? It makes her heart swell.

"I hope so."

He smiles at her, and she catches the subtle movement of his hand, sticky with orange, brushing against his collarbone. It reminds her of what Manta told her; before the matter of the notebook erased everything else. "Why do you do that?"

He stops, surprised. "Do what?"

"That." She gestures, and he stops, and, honest-to-gods, _blushes_. Is – is her question rude? Did she overstep? She needs to explain, quick.

"I – I am wondering because – I think I will meet mine here." One, two? She doesn't _know_ this. She just might. Is that enough? She wants it to be enough.

Yoh looks at her with something she refuses to be pity.

"And if I do! Even if I'm not… If it's not like you two, I want to be good to them. I want to be able to comfort them, even if they're not. Our friends."

The tournament is full of scary faces. Imagine being bonded to the woman with the cold stare from the group in white. Tamao feels like she could make someone wither with a glance.

Suddenly Yoh cracks up, and she flushes. Did she say something wrong again?

"W-what? Is it stupid?"

"No!" He raises a hand. "That's just… So you, Tamao. It's very sweet." He's still laughing. "Okay. Well. I don't know the science of it but I can try to explain. So you know how everything has a frequency?"

She doesn't.

"It's kind of a secret… rhythm. Everyone has their own. Everything, too. A melody unique to them. I heard that if the wind hits a bridge at exactly its frequency, it can destroy it, just like that. Even if the wind isn't that strong!"

"Destroy it?" That's… scary. Does he mean that souls can do that to each other? Could Yoh and Anna…?

"With souls it's a little bit different," he says, like he read her mind. "If you manage to hit the right frequency when your soulmate is on it, you can… harmonize with them. Connect, even if you're not together."

He's using his fingers to demonstrate, twirling them together on the same invisible circle. He is, quite literally, twiddling his thumbs and Tamao guesses it won't be long until Anna comes after him.

"That's what Anna and I do. Touching my words, it helps. It's like… A signal? I tell her I'm here. I tell her she's not alone. I tell myself I'm not, either."

…

The words were soft when Yoh said them, and they still are now, in the dark of her bedroom. She sits in the quiet night hours, her hands on her ankles, just breathing.

This might not work. After all, she is not flared. After all, for all she knows her soulmates are on the other side of the planet, and the vision was just a coincidence. But she doesn't believe in coincidences. In fact, like she told Yoh, she believes they are so close she could almost touch them, and she intends to.

So she closes her eyes and focuses on the frequency she believes she found. What gave her the first vision, the one that left her lying on the ground grasping at something that she doesn't quite remember. _Belonging_. And she belongs! She belongs here, one step behind Yoh and Anna, supporting them even if destiny didn't tell her to. Soon enough the war will start but for now – for now? For now she is at peace, she belongs here, and it is this peace she wants to offer to her intended. (Intendeds?)

She belongs here.

_This is where she should be._

It is then, at that thought, that she feels it. The slightest twinge on a distant koto string tied to her ankle. She cannot help the smile that blossoms on her lips then. _There you are_ , she thinks, unsure whether it can go through at all. She wishes she could see them. Could wrap a warm blanket around them.

There is no response. Only the soft cry of the koto, distantly.

ꙮ

Hao keeps the notebook. Well, he lets Opachô keep it.

He could bring it back to Yoh's. It would make for an interesting conversation, as whoever drew this is clearly obsessed with his twin. In love? Maybe. With someone who is his mirror. It is a strange thought.

Someone who is _not afraid?_ Of him.

 _That_ is laughable.

It is laughable because it is a lie. Everyone is afraid of him, up to and including his own. Only Opachô isn't, yet. And it's happening. He can tell the malady is spreading to her, too; sometimes she steals glances at him when he's not looking, and she knows he knows. But she can't stop it, and neither can he.

Everyone is afraid of him and to pretend otherwise is foolish.

But!

Bringing back the notebook would let him grow more familiar with Yoh and his people. It would be the perfect excuse to stay a while.

He lets Opachô keep it. She leaves the drawings of the other person mostly alone (well, she colors in a few. It rather improves them, according to them both) and so he gets to see more of those. This is, he suspects, the real reason he doesn't bring the notebook back.

He is so hungry for knowledge of his unfamiliar twin! These drawings feel safe in a way things rarely are. He doesn't even have to leave his stomping grounds to learn about him.

Here's what he learns:

\- Whoever drew this didn't have access to Yoh these past few months. Every sketch is of him in a ridiculous school uniform, or almost.

\- As a corollary, Yoh doesn't know how to button a shirt properly. Hao doesn't wear these often but bets he could do it better.

\- Yoh likes oranges a lot more than seems reasonable.

\- When he is truly relaxed, Yoh has dimples.

Practice sketches for what may have been a birthday present show him the importance of bright, blooming music for his all-too-human brother. What does color sound like? Part of him almost wants to find out.

When it gets too much they just go to the landscapes. Opachô really likes to stare at those. She will sit there, several minutes at a time, following a thread only she sees. He finds them rather disquieting, and it takes him a few times to understand why: although it seems empty, it is not. There, behind the lines of the drawing, hidden in the folds of the twisted buildings and spiky trees, is a focal point. A little… character. Barely a shadow, so small he is lost in the immensity of the page.

And yet everything feels like it is staring at this shadow. Poised to strike at him, and at Hao, merely for looking.

Now that he knows, he sees the shadow on the other pages. Always alone, small, stared at, dissected by forces resolutely inhuman. It would be disturbing, for someone normal, he supposes. And yet. What is he but not this inhuman force? This is the experience of someone who is resolutely afraid of the world. He is looking at himself through human eyes and the result is fearsome.

How can the same person be _not afraid?_ Of him? Laughable, really. Amusing. Intriguing?

What other secrets are there in these pages? Opachô seems to relish in his slow discovery. She probably has found all the secrets already, but asking her, or reading her mind, would be cheating. She is careful not to 'tell' him, and he does not pry.

…

Night comes and he summons Spirit of Fire to stare up at his prize. The Great Spirits, in all their splendor. So close, and yet so far.

Standing there he doesn't quite believe it. Part of him wishes to reach out and steal it. Who cares about the tournament? This is his destiny. This is what he's been working towards for a thousand years. This is _where he should be_.

Is that a flute, somewhere down below? Warm hands wrap around him, and he smiles. He knows that feeling, that resolutely accepting warmth. At the end of everything, like it was always meant to be: her.

 _There you are_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading! Please let me know if you liked this chapter, it will make my day <3
> 
> This chapter said TamRyû rights, and also TamYoh friendship rights. Look, I know I have a clear path to my own satisfaction, but if I can feed people along the way? *finger guns*
> 
> Thanks to Tsume Yuki and Bluecat for their support, you two are sweethearts!
> 
> Who can guess where that title comes from? I'm a transparent fangirl, I guess.


	10. Throwing the gantlet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To win; to fail; to comfort.

The first match of that second round feels a lot less satisfying than it should have.

This is one of Hao’s handpicked teams, and it is _humiliated_. Quite the sight, really: Hao’s own chosen knocked out by children. By nobodies. She could not watch the match, but she sees the stretchers.

Now, does this mean Hao’s chosen were weak, or that the children aren’t actually nobodies? Who’s to say. She cannot, in either case, rejoice earnestly. She knows what’s ahead of them.

Marco and the men pretend to celebrate Hao's humiliation. It is only pretense. They, too, know what's ahead, whose trial is yet to come. Since the matches were announced there has been silence among them; a dark, smelly cloud that hangs around the X-III. The mark of sacrifice. The mark of death.

Jeanne hates it. She hates it so much to see John suddenly quiet, Chris taking his distances, Marco and Meene straight-up unable to look at each other. She hates it so much, in fact, that she decides she will ask them to forfeit. Tonight. At dinner. Yes, she will do exactly that.

“My lady,” Marco asks, “are you ready?”

And she is.

As they come out into the fire, she can feel, beyond the fortress of faith, a gaze burning her Iron Maiden. There he is, the enemy. But she will not give him the attention he seeks. She decided. He is dealt with.

She focuses on Lyserg and quiets her other thoughts.

They chose ahead of time to let him handle this fight. Furyoku-wise, it is a reasonable match-up, but that is not the main reason. Marco suggested it because they need proof that Lyserg has come to terms with his own conflicted feelings. It is a trial and it is a challenge, and he is happy to meet both.

What neither she nor Marco expected was that he would address people in the audience. It is clear he knows these people. Is this the famed Yoh who protected one of Hao’s in front of Marco? Risking his own life for the damned?

And Lyserg is his friend?

This is new to Jeanne. She wonders who that Yoh is, and how Lyserg was with them. She doesn’t wonder why he left; Lyserg’s soul is exactly like the rest of her soldiers. But she listens.

His first strike is fast. Precise. He breathes like Porf taught him to, moves like John taught him to, uses the kind of taunting that she just admonished Marco for using.

“Only a fool frees a captured enemy,” Lyserg says, and a bell tolls, somewhere in the distance. “I’m sorry, Yoh. Being kind has never saved anyone.”

Where does this come from? She doesn’t know. She wasn’t there. Is this Marco? He was meant to –

It _is_ a fake-out. Just like what was planned. It was just such a good fake-out that she fell for it. Jeanne is relieved, and confused, but she lets it play out. Lyserg continues to speak, a mix of intimidation and truth. He’s not good with his spirit control, he says. He could really hurt them. He’s not the strongest here by any means! They all know what it is to lose loved ones. Don’t you have families?

It’s a strange but true way to put it. They’re all here because they have nobody. These three men aren’t of their ilk. But Lyserg sees that, and it hinders him; he sees the hurt he needs to do.

And he can’t do it.

You only get one fake-out. You can pretend you will kill and then spare the people drowning in their own obliviousness, _once_. This is your one chance to convince them. The one hand you are allowed to thrust into the waters and help them climb out. But Lyserg is… Lyserg is going for a second one.

Jeanne realizes how much of the path he’s yet to walk. She made her choice, thought he made his; he is still deciding. Marco is tense at her side; he sees it, too. He, too, worries for their Lyserg. But she is the one who chose the boy. She put him in their team, she took the responsibility. And if she does nothing, beautiful golden feathers will slit his throat and leave him bleeding out, drowned by his own kindness.

So she asks Marco to throw her.

…

What comes next unfolds like a dream.

Her words are true to her heart and her faith. She talks to these half-drowned men, but really, there is only one person who needs to hear it. Who needs to know that whatever Luchist told him was wrong. She is not a child and she is not weak.

She is not weak.

“Be not afraid,” she says, to the public. But Anatel should be afraid, and with him the great evil she reveals herself to. “This blood is merely proof of my determination. The world is in darkness. Cruelty and lies abound. Humans cannot stop themselves from hurting one another. The strong pick on the weak, and who is there to stop them? Only the rest of the strong.”

She is of the strong and she will stop him.

But Anatel is not of the strong. These three men are like her people, unable to see what they face. It would be cruelty to stomp on a fly, and it would be cruelty to stomp on these men who believe in their dreams, and refuse to back down not because they are stupid but because they are blind. She does not need to take a deep breath, or even pause. She registers this fact, and adapts.

“I thought, if I can, I wish to do something for this world. If I can, I want to rid this world of pain. So I swore to God that I would take all of the suffering and sins on myself. I will banish evil from this world. Let there be peace on earth.”

The eyes of fire are on her. She could look up at him, make this about him; she does not. She focuses on the man before her and his magnificent gold wings. An angel, of sorts; not hers. Does he understand, now?

“There is no need to sin further. Though you have tried to kill my messenger, you have yet to truly hurt anyone here. Simply back down and no harm will be done to you. Mercy is something we all need to show to one another.”

Her brain filters out the awestruck murmurs in the crowd. It filters out the crying from Marco and Lyserg. It even filters out Hao. It focuses, only, intently, on Anatel. Their eyes meet, and she throws out her whole soul in this moment. Back off, she wants to convey. Let me prove to the world and to me that kindness is not a sin, and that perhaps mercy works.

The air shakes with her power. Anyone sane would understand the balance of this fight has shifted; Anatel does not.

Anatel persists, and Jeanne realizes three things:

  * Mercy is no longer an option. She needs to finish this match, now.
  * If she doesn’t, Marco will, and she _just_ said she chose to bear the weight of the world’s anger and sin. She won’t let him tarnish his white wings.
  * This is the one chance she gets to tell Hao to back off from her people ahead of their match.



So she moves for the kill, and it is a lot easier than she thinks it should be.

ꙮ

This should have been a day of celebration.

Tamao baked and cooked all night. She knows a lot of food can sate the hungers of victory like that of loss, and it is all just about ready when they come back from the arena.

They are still high with the rush of the fight: everyone is talking over each other, praising Chocolove’s jokes and power, marveling at Ren’s performance, recalling how creepy Peyote was. Watching them win was exhilarating; watching Ren challenge Yoh was scary. But scary-nice; scary-empowering.

When she comes back in the room carrying the first steaming plate and sees how everyone’s faces just _fall_ , it isn’t scary-nice anymore. It’s just scary. Ryû looks like death. Manta and Yoh seem shaken; Ren and Anna are cold.

Ignoring the lead in her stomach, Tamao moves to put the plate down on the table in the middle of the room, and then asks: “What’s wrong?”

“One of the teams up next,” Anna explains tersely. She does not feel concerned about whatever it is, Tamao can tell. But she is tense, and it’s because of Yoh. Which makes little sense. It cannot be Funbari Onsen’s team, can it? They would have been warned in advance, they're supposed to be in the third match!

“Remember the boy they were looking for in Patch village? The one they were unsufferable about?”

“You don’t get it,” Horo-Horo cuts in. “He’s with the X-Laws and these dudes are crazy! They killed someone right in front of us!”

The worst thing isn’t Horo-Horo’s raw tone. It’s that Yoh is entirely silent. He so rarely decides to actively dislike somebody; whoever the X-Laws are, they _earned_ this face he’s making.

“Everyone could see this coming,” Ren snarls, and it is clear that he did not. “He was always yapping about how Marco was right.”

“What do we do, Yoh?”

It is Horo-Horo who asks, but the rest of the room falls silent. They aren’t a family, exactly, aren’t one team, but they are _something_ , and Yoh is the heart of this something, whatever it is. The heart struggles, and so the body falls quiet. Waiting.

Then Yoh smiles, and the body moves again.

“The stadium’s a ten-minute walk from here. Let’s run over and cheer for him!”

So they do. Tamao and Anna walk side by side behind the rambunctious boys. She sees the itako touch her mark and does not mention it. It is a comfort, now, to know that Anna shares what is happening with Yoh ever so intimately. That she can help, without even having to say anything out loud. Still, fear is thick in her stomach, makes it hard to walk calmly. It does not have a name, or a shape, yet, but her board burns under her fingers, and the world seems, once more, to be holding its breath.

Tamao only recognizes the boy when they are in their seats. She does not mention that, either. What could she say, anyway? Nothing even happened the day the group in white came by the house. They never even spoke.

But her attention quickly moves to the statue. The moment she sees it, she can’t look away. It is really a person, then? The pull is there again, the need to get closer, to see whoever is inside; her hands are tight on the railing, trying to keep her feet on the ground.

Her fear does not ebb, even with her being so entirely focused on the statue. She can tell Yoh is still worried, though he pretends to sit quietly. When the blond man – Marco, it’s the voice from inside the statue that says his name, the voice that reaches Tamao powerful and perfect in spite of the distance – speaks, he is worrying. What Lyserg parrots is frankly terrifying, second only to the speed at which he unleashes his power on his opponents. He moves so fast she barely sees him. There is blood, and her stomach lurches.

He went for their mediums, she notices in spite of the nausea welling up in her gut. He broke the pyramid; he shattered the sarcophagus; he took the masks from the false gods and begged them to see the truth of the fight. Drew blood, yes, but only some. Only enough.

 _What a gentle soul_.

She should be scared, but the thought distracts her. There is something to see here. He’s trying to scare them off. He’s _bluffing_. And it seems to work: two of the Egyptian men take steps back, beg their leader to back down.

Their leader. He’s the only important piece of this bout left. Anatel, that is his name. He looks rough. His chest is bleeding, and his arms don’t seem to move right. But he does not back off. _What now, child?_

This is not her thought, and she frowns, but she does not have time to question it.

The living statue moves.

The living statue pushes Lyserg out of the way, and her voices reaches Tamao again. That soft, melancholy voice that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same second.

“I cannot allow one who hesitates to fight on our behalf.”

How can she hear her so clearly? The voice is so soft it could be a whisper, and yet it tears Tamao’s heart right out of her chest. She does not hear Lyserg’s body flying, Anatel’s protestations. Fear comes then, like a volcano exploding, and she slumps over the railing. She does not feel the hand that holds her back.

“Silence, scoundrel.” _Ooh, feisty._

Not her thought. A strange shiver courses through her, a cold rabbit that gallops over her thoughts and threatens to tear her mind to shreds. Why is she so afraid? There is no danger for her here. Not even for Lyserg. He will not kill today. The statue is no one to her, and whatever she does will not impact her in any way.

So why is she afraid?

She feels like a very small rabbit someone is desperately trying to soothe. It is not working so well: her throat dries up as Marco rights the Iron Maiden and draws out a key. How slow is this? Why aren’t their foes _doing anything?_ _Simple souls, really. Fools that do not deserve this amount of fear._

She wishes she could focus on these strange thoughts that aren’t hers, but her eyes go blurry with strange tears as the lock clicks open, and _then_ she _is_ here.

The leader of the X-Laws, _in all her glory._

Tamao’s breathing stops dead in her throat. Beside her, someone yells that the Iron Maiden is naked, and Anna covers Yoh’s eyes like a mere hand could hide divinity. She barely hears the commotion, let alone process it. It all feels… _so small_. Who cares?

The Iron Maiden speaks. Her every word is an arrow that hits true. She says _be not afraid_ , and Tamao is not, for one precious, single moment. She says _I want to do something for this world_ , and Tamao knows her terribly, violently serious. Fear rises again, not for herself, but for this child-woman bathed in her own blood.

 _Why, for a stranger?_ The way this person steps out of her _torture instrument_ is so casual it might as well have been a closet to neverland. She is in control here. She knows what she is doing. Or does she?

“What arrogance,” Anna says. Is that it? Mere arrogance?

No, it is not. It is yet something else, and Tamao wishes she could think, wishes her whole soul didn’t feel paralyzed by this cocktail of fear and awe. And something else, too: something that she can only call recognition.

 _She is doing exactly what Lyserg did_ , something whispers to her. And what Marco did, at the very start. She scolded him for taunting their opponents! And then Lyserg did it, too. And now her. _Going at it the exact same,_ wrong _, way. Showing_ off, hoping to avoid the confrontation, _trying to scare present and future opponents_. Somehow the thought is amusing.

Amusing? _That_ is strange enough to tear her eyes off her, for a second. She looks around the stadium. Sees the emotion in the stadium, the magnetic pull the girl has.

Not a girl. _The Iron Maiden_ , that is her title.

This… these words, this speech, it all feels genuine and rehearsed at the same time. Worked on for the longest time, and imagined just at this moment. Told to Anatel, sincerely enough, she is sure, but… it’s not intended for him. It hasn’t been until now.

She is speaking to Hao. Who else? She struggles to think clearly, things are happening too fast. She is lacking context. But there is something here; a different path, etched in the smile of the child-woman bathed in blood.

 _Different, you think_?

When Anatel persists, he is instantly wrapped in iron, held at perfect eye level for their upper floor seats. There is no hesitation in the way she moves now, and Tamao understands enough to shield Manta’s eyes when it happens.

The axe falls cleanly; head and body are separated in a torrent of blood. It does not feel real. Neither does the parody of mercy she then offers his teammates. It feels… stilted.

This is the first time she’s ever fought, Tamao realizes. Even as she is fast when she moves, she is slow, waiting for a reaction to her every action. The other two Niles have no chance to avoid her attacks when they come, but they could have walked off. She would have let them.

This is a baby with power unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

She needs to stop her, she immediately realizes. The girl does not understand what she is doing. What she is destroying, here and now in this stadium. Innocence, clean hands, the right to oppose Hao – it is all at play here, and it will never come back to her.

Her hands touch the railing as if to test its strength. She feels her legs half ready to jump. _And then what?_ She’d be in free fall, headed straight for a girl wielding murder like a second skin. For a second, she sees it, feels just intoxicated enough to try it. Running around would take too long. She heard how Yoh did it, she could do the same. It’s not even that far…

 _Stay put,_ the presence in her head says, and Tamao’s feet lock into place. She can only watch the rest of it from her balcony seat. Who is that? In her head? She tries to think, but her body refuses to move; she can only watch as the girl marches back into the Iron Maiden.

Only once the statue is closed once more does the presence fade, and she can move again. Glancing back to realize…

“Manta fainted!”

ꙮ

From his lips falls a deep sigh. Clearly this day is only going to get more boring before it gets better.

Tournament matches are not all that exciting the third time around. He’s here mostly because he likes to make other people nervous. After Peyote’s disappointing performance, and before Yoh’s hopefully exciting one…

Is them.

He is here for entertainment; unfortunately, the most interesting thing is shaping up to be his brother’s friends. Lyserg Diethel he remembers, alright, but there is nothing exciting about the kid. If anything, his presence makes things worse, because now his brother is soured and Ashil is going to seethe during the whole fight. The witches needle him like a cornered dog. Never smart enough to recognize a biter, are they?

“So _that_ is your soulmate? A whole X-Law?”

“He’s not my anything. Shut up, some of us are trying to pay attention.”

“Oh? To X-Law prattle? Fuck, he did you good, didn’t he? You are positively _smitten_.”

“Get out of my face.”

“Children, calm down.”

Turbein reacts more to his annoyance than anything else, and Hao cannot muster up the will to be grateful. The stadium is loud with thoughts and bread is not enough to distract him. Odd that Luchist is not the first one to react…

Or perhaps it is not all that odd, considering.

Diethel is trying to get his opponents to back down. He couches his hesitation in gentle, noble dresses, and pretends to be ready to go for the kill, if necessary. But he is not. Will never be.

What a gentle soul. He is bluffing, and it draws a terrible hungry smile to his lips, because this is no fairy tale; because Anatel does not back down. What now, child?

What now indeed. He sees the hesitation break Lyserg’s Over-Soul, and before he even falls to his knees violent, raw panic washes over him. _Him_. Like a small rabbit wreaking havoc in his thoughts. Luck has his binoculars hiding his face; nobody sees the frown spreading over his features.

What is this? It certainly does not belong to him. Too juvenile, for one. Try as he might, he cannot chase the trembling thing nestled inside him, so he at least tries to identify it. Who can be _this_ scared? Not the Niles. They are not powerful enough to realize what is about to happen to them. In fact, they think their opponents at disadvantage. Not the X-I, nor their little friends, thick with their superiority complex. It is really hard to gather much more than just fear. But beyond that… there is focus. The rabbit is focused, so very… focused. On what?

 _The living statue,_ the rabbit breathes, and he redirects his binoculars, free once more to move. Oh. She talks.

Perhaps this fight would not be that boring after all. A rabbit in his head and the figurehead of the X-Laws about to reveal herself. If the rabbit – if he – wasn’t this intently focused, he would look to his right, where Luchist grows cold and tense, but he can barely spare the thought

“Silence, scoundrel,” she says, somewhere very far from the rabbit and him, but close enough that he can imagine she talks only for them. Ooh, feisty. Is there something to her after all?

 _How slow is this? Why aren’t their foes_ doing anything? Simple souls, really. Fools that do not deserve this amount of fear, he tries to tell the rabbit as it focuses his attention on Marco and the key. For a second, he is getting through, and the rabbit notices him, but the lock clicks open, and then _she_ is _here_ , the woman who rises out of the maw of her iron monster.

There she is, _the leader of the X-Laws_ , in all her glory. A child in pajamas, using scholarly English to sound wise.

Most of the stadium will be caught in her spell. It is a good show, and he wonders how much of this is rehearsed. Anyone with a modicum of understanding would have prepared for this, but he can tell these words are brand new. A gift to this stadium, a foolish gift of truth, and honesty.

This is for him. A declaration of war wrapped in pretty pink bows. He wants to snort, but the rabbit is too dazed to let him. It, too, is letting the pretty tears and the genuine sweetness overtake its brain. So small.

Fear is still bubbling up in his mind, that fear that is not his. Why, for a stranger? She stepped out of a torture instrument. She does not need to be helped; or rather she does, but there is nothing a little rabbit could do for her. She is doing exactly what Lyserg did. Going at it the exact same, _wrong_ , way. Showing off, hoping to avoid a confrontation, trying to scare present and future opponents. The Iron Maiden, through Anatel, is speaking to him. Flaunting her _difference._

Different, you think, little rabbit?

Perhaps he cannot expect intelligent analysis from a stray thought. The Iron Maiden, from her high horse, is trying to use her opponents to make a point. To scare him off. Isn’t that selfish? Isn’t that exactly what he does?

And it is utter nonsense. Does she truly think he will back off because of a few pretty words and a show of force? What an amusing child. If truth was enough to stop him, he would not be there.

The Iron Maiden is, for sure, devastatingly true. It only takes him a few seconds to come to his conclusions. _This is the first time she’s ever fought_ , comes the thought, and he grins. The rabbit is not as oblivious as it first appeared to be. The girl below has no doubt been able to do these things for a long time, but she has clearly never used them on a live target. She knows intimately how much blood can be taken from someone without killing them, and she is toeing this line. Still trying to show mercy.

_This is a baby with power unlike anything you’ve ever seen._

Yes, exactly, he opines. A baby wielding a scythe so long it casts a shadow over many of the powerful faces in the audience. Not his, of course. But who knows?

The rabbit is getting upset. Its first sight of real bloodlust, he bets. Although it is not fear _of_ the Maiden that comes through, but fear _for_ her. Words come through, clearer and sharper, tinged with powerless agony. _I need to stop her. She does not understand what she is doing. What she is destroying, here and now in this stadium. Innocence, clean hands…_

He sees the rabbit’s urge to jump, to somehow throw itself into the fight. Like it could even be fast enough to stop the storm of blood and metal below. And then what, little rabbit? _Running around would take too long. Yoh taught me how, I can do the same. It’s not even that far…_

It would break its body against the Patch barrier and probably cause more ruckus. He has no desire to see Marco kill another stray rabbit just because they tried to jump in. Or perhaps he is feeling generous. In any case, he tugs on the link, and tries to freeze the rabbit in the same way it froze him at first. _Stay put_.

It works. He holds the rabbit as the Iron Maiden repaints the arena with blood that is not her own. There, there.

This too will pass.

He will make it pass. Take heart, little rabbit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! 
> 
> This took a long while. I had a lot of ideas for this chapter, for this fight. I had to pick and choose what could or could not happen. I must have reread the X-I first match act - all the beginning of volume 14 tbh - at least five times, with various degrees of focus. I feel like I understand it pretty well now. Unfortunately that meant not a lot could change from the canon events. In this fic I've mostly had flashes of things I wanted to see through the prism of this soulmate 'light' which means that... they've got to happen first!
> 
> It also turns out thought-sharing when you have both thinkers' povs is insanely hard. I hate it. Tamao, Hao, stop this immediately. Do not pass go.
> 
> This chapter might be kind of a change of pace. What did you think? Let me know in the comments! Thanks <3


	11. I spy with my little eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To witness; to be visited ; to visit.

**Previously on: Growing Pains**

_The second round is here. After The Ren’s triumph in the arena, Tamao was all but prepared to witness the X-I’s bloody exploit. However, rather than be horrified by the mysterious Iron Maiden and her idea of ‘justice’, she found herself magnetized and unable to lift her eyes off her. Meanwhile, Hao found himself communicating with an unknown voice in the audience. Will he piece together who it might be?_

* * *

“Kevin, this is not the time for jokes.”

Isn’t it?

Jeanne is not quite sure herself. She does not remember anything between the match and now. In fact, she struggles to realize where she is, right now. The meeting happened, that she is pretty sure of. What was said? What was not?

She has no idea.

She is not in the hallway where this is happening. The discussion, the post-meeting moment between Marco, Lyserg, and the X-III. John and the others have stalked off somewhere.

Has she said anything about being present at dinner?

She has no idea.

“You’re too stubborn, Marco.”

Is he? They are here because of his stubbornness. Because even with his life in shambles, with his mentor salting the earth behind him, even with the odds and the sacrifices, he held on. Jeanne won the match because of him.

She won

Didn’t she?

“Don’t go.” Lyserg is crying. “Please, don’t go. There is another way. There must be another way!”

“There might be,” Meene says, and her voice is soft. She who doesn’t like Lyserg is soft with him. They are such good people. “But if we did not go, what would everyone else think? If even we are too scared to stand before Hao, how are they supposed to have hope? To make the necessary sacrifices?”

“But you’ll die,” Lyserg replies, and it’s an accusation. “How is anyone supposed to feel hopeful if you die?”

“They’ll know there are people willing to stand up and put their lives on the line,” Christopher says. He too is soft. “They’ll know not everyone will just let him do as he pleases. We were here, and we fought him.”

There’s a voice. A voice that tries to get through to her. She tries to listen but she can’t make out what’s being said.

Lyserg is sobbing loudly. Where is she? She is not in this hallway. She is in the deserted library, back against the door that’s ever-so-slightly ajar. She sees her body from above, the crown of her hair, her nigh-perfect immobility. How did she come to be here? What has she been doing since the match?

She doesn’t remember. None of this feels real. There was something she wanted to do, wasn’t there? Something Jeanne wanted to do.

“Marco, it’s alright,” Christopher says. “Lyserg cries for us tonight, and it warms our hearts. As we said in the meeting, everyone is allowed to walk freely until the match tomorrow. If one of the X-III does not want to go, they will not go.”

There is silence and yet no one speaks. They all want to go.

This is what she wanted to do. Tell them not to. She forbids it. Jeanne does. Jeanne would only need to burst out of her hiding spot, take her sweet voice, and tell them. She does not want this.

“It’s okay to cry, Lyserg,” Kevin says. “Sadness is a normal emotion. But we have chosen our destiny this day, and we will not waver.”

“Marco,” Meene calls. “A word?”

He doesn’t answer, but she guesses he nods, because two sets of footsteps come her way.

Jeanne is in the library. A small, quiet space. They are coming towards her and she knows there isn’t much time to hide. She slips behind the door of the reserve, where they keep tape reels of everything they deem worth monitoring. She pushes the door back just when the two adults come in.

She is silent and the voice is silent. They both watch what’s playing beyond the door.

“Marco,” she says. Jeanne remembers when a word from her was enough to soothe him. Why is this no longer the case?

“I can’t,” he says. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“You can’t? Since when is that part of your vocabulary?”

“Don’t do this.”

Silence. They are both standing on either side of the small, cramped library, a table’s length between them. It might as well be an ocean, she thinks, without really understanding why.

“You don’t have to go.”

“And here you were, berating Lyserg for similar words, barely a minute ago.”

She doesn’t sound surprised. Just tired.

“That’s low.”

“What is low is scolding a child for being human, Marco. You don’t have to like him to treat him with respect.”

They stare. Why do they look like they share so much more in the silence than in the words?

“I don’t want to fight,” she says at length. “Please just apologize to him, Marco. He’s a good kid.”

“I know,” he says, and it is a pained sound. He yelled at Lyserg for voicing what he wasn’t willing to say. What he didn’t have the guts to ask, not in public, not as the leader of the X-Laws. She doesn’t know how she knows this; she just does.

“He’s a good kid,” he echoes.

“You’re a good man.”

“That’s going a bit too far.” His laugh sounds like gravel ricocheting. She wishes she was not listening.

“Today was hard on everyone.”

“Tomorrow will be worse.” The words are sharp, no, _taut_. A rope about to break. It breaks, and Marco takes off his glasses, taking a deep breath to say, “Meene, you…”

“Don’t.”

And he does not. Wind taken out of his sails.

“You can’t do this,” Meene says quietly. “You can’t force me to bow out just because of our link. This is bigger than us and you know it.”

And it is clear he knows. His eyes are a sea of suffering and rage. He’d go in her place, if he could. He’d go headfirst. It is frightening, to witness this maelstrom, the intensity with which they do not touch. She can barely breathe.

Slowly, he comes closer to her, takes her scarf off. There is her mark, shining gold there. Words in a language Jeanne knows. _You shouldn’t be out here in the rain_ , she reads, or pieces together, as Meene lets Marco run his glove down the mark.

Achingly slowly, Meene embraces him, and her hands touch where she knows Marco’s mark is. _What do you want?_ Jeanne remembers.

“I won’t,” he says, like his soul isn’t melting right out of his body as Meene steps back. They no longer look at each other. They look like they’d rather be worlds away from each other than have to look at each other again.

“Thank you.”

And then he’s alone, and then he, too, leaves.

The girl that is Jeanne but also not sinks to her knees in the small airless room behind the library. She can still stop this. She can still rise up, go to Meene, and tell her that while these grand speeches are well and good she will _not_ let them go to their deaths. What Lyserg cannot do, what Marco cannot do? She can.

She could.

If only these legs that are hers would move.

In the morning her legs move again. By then, it is too late.

ꙮ

After the painful match the boys go have lunch in the restaurant. Tamao’s food lies forgotten in their home, cold and unappetizing. She does not mind their decision; quietly, she puts things away. Manta helps. Most will be salvaged for the week’s meals but it will not taste as good, or be as joyful.

They are still reeling with the shock of seeing what happened to Lyserg, and even more importantly of discovering who they’ll have to face. The X-Laws do not play around, and now they know this for certain.

In the chaos it seems nobody really noticed Tamao’s strange behavior. She is rather glad, for she does not understand it herself, and she does not want to burden them with petty concerns. Anna is already under enough pressure; she is currently ordering Ponchi and Conchi around to clean the entire lower floor, something that speaks to her nerves. Tamao and Manta stay out of her way, for now.

And yet as she triages plates and dishes Tamao knows she has to tell them soon. To keep this silent would not only be stupidity but betrayal.

But… what is she supposed to tell them? There is a voice in her head? Something draws her to the Iron Maiden Jeanne like she is a magnet? Neither of these are facts that are useful. The boys don’t really ever discuss feelings, either. It’s accepted that Yoh and Anna have _something_ , something they don’t share, something that’s uniquely theirs. It’s accepted that Ren and Horo-Horo circle each other like wolves. But to talk about it, it just isn’t done, and in this war? No, she has to have something concrete first.

And the only thing she has is the voice. _That_ was real, and that was off. Because…

“Manta,” she asks, as she wraps waxed fabric around a plate of tonkatsu.

“Yes?”

“You said Yoh and Anna could feel each other’s state of mind. But how much of that is…” She searches for the right words and tries not to get overly nervous that he stopped moving to listen. “How much can they share? Can they talk in each other’s heads?”

He frowns, in what she fears is judgment, but turns out to be careful consideration. “I don’t really know. It’s rare, that much I know, and Yoh doesn’t really talk about it.”

She knows that, too. Yoh barely accepted to talk about it to her, and they’ve known each other a very long time. Perhaps if she had talked to him earlier, but bygones are bygones. “Does it happen only after they… the people bearing each other’s marks flare? The talking?”

He shrugs. “As far as I know. But it’s… It’s rather obscure. Research is banned, you know, because of how unethical some early experiments – oh!’

His face changes and he nearly shrieks with excitement.

“Tamao, did something happen? Did you find your soulmate?”

He’s so loud! Tamao flushes, and tries to shush him so her spirits or Anna don’t hear. “Please! I don’t know if that is what’s happening, and I don’t want them to get ideas and…”

Manta makes an ‘oh’ face, and then starts again, in a whisper: “What happened?”

“It was during the match.” She watches him grimace and apologizes. “I… I heard something, in my head. It was strange… like someone held me through it. And talked to me, and… It can’t have been me. The voice understood things I did not. It… felt differently about the match.”

“That is strange,” Manta admits. He is pale, and he clearly struggles for words. The memory weighs on him. “I didn’t look at you too much during the match, but I would have known if someone else was there. There weren’t any unfamiliar ghosts, either.”

They share a look of confusion.

“Let’s think this through logically. You heard the voice, right? Did you recognize it? Do you know who it could be?”

Tamao did not recognize it. The match was a lot to handle, and it still is. But she thinks back. “It was someone who did not feel threatened,” she says after a time. “Someone who was watching, and was not afraid.”

He swallows. “That does reduce the possibilities. This girl was frankly terrifying.”

And Tamao nods, though she was not afraid when it happened. But they do not have time to speak much further on the topic, because a door slams, and suddenly Ren is in the room, agitated.

“Creepy fucker’s on the prowl,” he swears, and goes for one of the cans they have yet to put away. The can wobbles. He’s… trembling? It feels like fear, but also not.

“What’s happening?”

“It’s Hao,” he admits, glancing at the food and suddenly looking a little guilty. “Tried to… I don’t even know.”

Tamao has always been intimidated by Ren, but she takes a step towards him. “Are you okay?”

He meets her eyes, apparently surprised, and flushes ever so slightly before nodding. “I’m fine, it was just weird. It’s…”

“Tamao.” Anna’s voice is so sharp it could cut through a wall. “Upstairs. Manta, too. _Now_.”

And her voice is scared. Anna’s voice is never scared.

“He followed me here,” Ren realizes immediately. They miss a beat. Tamao looks at the door. She can see, so clearly, who’s soon to be behind it. _Someone who did not feel threatened._ It can’t be…?

“You stay.” Anna is speaking to Ren, who nods, his weapon in hand. Tamao could fight this. She does not want to leave Anna alone; but Anna is not alone, and Manta needs protecting.

So she gathers him in her arms and climbs the stairs two at a time. They are barely upstairs when someone knocks on the door, and she hides them both in the corner of the staircase. Where they can somewhat hear but not be seen.

Anna goes to the door in silence and opens it like it’s no big deal at all.

“Yoh is not here,” she says.

“Too bad, but he’s not who I’m here to see.”

It _is_ him. Tamao can’t breathe.

“I told you I wasn’t interested.”

“That’s not what I’m here for, either.”

Steps in the hallway. Somehow he side-stepped Anna. “Oh, who’s all that food for? Isn’t it a bit early to celebrate Yoh’s victory? Oh, I see. A shame nobody touched it!”

“That food isn’t for you.”

“I don’t believe in private property,” he says like that answers anything, and Tamao hears the distinct sound of someone biting on the karinto snacks she prepared. How come Anna has not slapped him yet?

“What do you want,” Ren asks, thunder in his voice.

“I’m not here for you,” Hao replies like that’s an answer. “I made you my offer, now it’s up to you to take or leave it.”

“Then why are you here,” Anna asks, in a monotone that Tamao envies. No questioning the words, no getting caught in the threads of manipulation Hao is weaving. Just blank and to the point.

There is a sound, like clothes shifting. Tamao wants to peer down but she can’t move. Manta is mouthing something to her but it’s like her brain refuses to process it.

“Someone lost this,” Hao says. “My little one played with it for a while, but that’s to be expected when one doesn’t pay attention to their things.” Only silence seems to answer him. “I had a look. Whoever did these had quite some talent. And the arrogance to match. Do you consider these appropriate, as Yoh’s fiancée? Just checking, I might feel up to some painting later.”

“What can he be talking about,” Manta whispers, but Tamao’s stomach has dropped to the floor. She knows. She can hear the pages moving.

“For a moment I wasn’t sure who it could be. After all, Yoh has quite the large following now, and I didn’t want to give this to someone who didn’t need to see it. But considering how intimately the person who did this seems to know Yoh, it felt only appropriate to let my sister-in-law decide what to do with it.”

The insinuation makes Tamao’s cheeks hot. She wants to disappear.

“This is nothing new to me,” Anna finally replies. “It’s good to see you finally made time to get it back to its rightful owner.”

“I told you, I don’t believe in private property.” More noise. “Shamans as weak as that one really shouldn’t be hanging around here. It’s going to become pretty dangerous soon.”

“Is this a threat?”

“Ren, don’t ask pointless questions.”

The intruder is moving again. Leaving the dining room, she can tell by the sound of his footsteps. She dares to sneak a look down the staircase. He’s on his way out.

“Tell her to go back to Japan,” Hao says casually as he crosses the threshold, a karinto still in hand. “She’ll be much happier there.”

ꙮ

Hao does not come back for dinner. It doesn’t worry Luchist over much; their master can hold his own. It is Turbein’s turn to cook, anyways. Opachô is saddened by the loss of her coloring book, but Turbein distracts her by giving her the task of cutting the radishes into flowers. She is gifted with a knife; and where elsewhere one would worry about injuries here it seems like as good an idea as any.

There is excited chatter about the upcoming matches. The witches are happy to be Hao’s opening number. As always, there is ribbing on Ashil, and as always he seems about two drops of nitroglycerine from exploding.

Luchist does not want to see this; he rises.

“I will go see Peyote,” he announces to the group. “Ashil, come with me.”

“What?” Petulant child. “Why?”

“Because I told you to.”

Ashil doesn’t react well to orders from others in their little group, but Luchist’s status is explicit enough that he growls but makes to follow.

…

The building is enough to make Ashil queasy. It’s such a place of _weakness_. An infirmary manned by the Patch. For those who do not have healers, or companions.

Or whose masters don’t care enough to pick them up.

He is bound to follow Luchist, so he does, but every step is apprehensive. Hao said nothing about going to fetch Peyote; if _that_ was the reason for his sudden disappearance Luchist would not have decided to come by.

Their journey here was silent. Luchist is never quite talkative, but this time it’s Ashil who does not dare ask. Why are they here? Why isn’t Peyote back to camp? What’s to gain from talking to a loser?

They cross paths with a Patch in the hall of the building, not one Ashil can recognize in the few seconds he sees them, and then they’re here. In the room where Peyote pretends to sleep.

It reeks of antiseptic and sick. Ashil cannot be compelled to approach, even a little, and Luchist steps forward without forcing him. The green-faced teenager stays by the door, hidden from the broken body by a good deal of curtains and medical apparatus, and yet he wishes he could hide further, could sink into the white wall.

There is no rhyme or reason to this sudden fear of Peyote. Is it? Fear of Peyote? All he knows is his feet are leaden, and his mouth tastes of iron.

Luchist brought leftovers. The smell of food only worsens Ashil’s nausea.

“Wake up, Peyote. You need to eat.”

Wouldn’t the Patch have given him something? Ashil risks a look. There is a tray by the bed, untouched. The food here can’t be all that good, he supposes, or rather pretends to suppose. Like his stomach could bear the touch of food, if he was ever on the other side of this room.

“I am not sleeping,” comes the raspy voice of the sick and wounded. Did the Patch not heal him? “He did not come.”

Ashil swallows knives. Luchist merely sighs.

“Today has been a very busy day and our master must prepare for tomorrow.”

“Don’t make me laugh. He could kill these pests in his sleep.”

He could. Ashil didn’t need a second glance at the X-III to know that much. If they show, they are dead.

Luchist says nothing. Ashil knows this silence; it’s the stern, unrelenting silence of the teacher, the priest, the father of the camp. It’s the one Luchist keeps when he wants them to do something, when he wants it enough to accept no rebuttals.

“I am not hungry,” Peyote says, and it sounds like a petulant child, because that’s the effect of Luchist’s silence.

“I came here with food, and I will not leave with it. Sit up.”

“I told you, I’m not hungry.”

It’s pathetic.

“Don’t be a child, Peyote. You are not so heavily wounded and Turbein cooked this for you.”

Half a lie, but Peyote seems to swallow that well enough, and the covers shift. Ashil cannot, refuses to imagine being reduced to this. Having to be told to eat, wallowing in bed like a wilted flower. He’s been in here too long; the smells of food and drugs has turned into an overpowering scent of decay that he knows he will have to wash out of his clothes and hair. Will it even come off?

“Why are you here, Luchist?”

Luchist takes a moment too long to answer.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I asked. Turbein’s already been around. If he wanted to get me fucking falafel and manakeesh, he could have given it to me. The Boz haven’t come back, if that’s what you’re here to see.”

“I didn’t expect them to. You three were never really close.”

Peyote mutters something about souped-up musicians. He’s right. Who would want to grow close to the useless duo? If they don’t want to go back, then it’s their loss. Hao certainly does not need them.

“The Patch won’t let me stay here tonight. They say I’m in perfect health.”

“You seem to be.”

“Are you going to ask me to come back?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

What is that question? Peyote lost, but he can still fight. Can still call ghosts and hunt souls and.

But if he can do all of that and is in perfect health, why isn’t he back yet?

No. That’s not the question.

The question is, why does Luchist make it sound like a choice? There is only Hao. There is nothing else. To lose in the tournament is not just that. It’s also losing the right to be in Hao’s presence, at Hao’s meals, in Hao’s thoughts.

How could anyone bear it?

Peyote cannot, clearly. Peyote with his music and his skeletons and his boasting is now as good as chained to this bed. As good as dead.

“You’re here to kill me,” Peyote finally says. “He told you to come and kill me.” But it’s not with hatred he says it. Nor with spite.

He sounds grateful. A loose end, tied up. Hao is not abandoning him, he’s taking care of him to the end. Ashil hears it like it was said out loud, the train of thoughts. He sees the appeal of it. Oh how he sees the appeal of it. Wishes Hao would –

“Of course not,” Luchist says. “Is it so hard to imagine a life without Hao? You have a whole world to breathe in. You have done your work for our Kingdom; if you want to stop here, he won’t mind.”

“What are you…?”

“I’m saying that Hao doesn’t care if we losers live or die.”

The iron settles like an unhappy brew in Ashil’s stomach, roiling and heaving, and he suddenly knows that if he stays he will throw up, so he doesn’t. He runs out of the infirmary, and he runs through the quiet evening streets, and he doesn’t stop until he’s thoroughly lost in the woods. The cold air of the night stings his cheeks and he scuffs his shoes on roots and rocks, but he cannot outrun his own mind and its terrifying new mantra:

He doesn’t care if you die. How could anyone bear it? How could he bear it? How will he bear it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my fic and in my fic Marco doesn’t beat kids, although he does yell at them sometimes. Good? Good.
> 
> Depersonalization, derealization and dissociation are close friends. Jeanne is not doing very well. Wonder if she'll do better in the morning.
> 
> Also! I stole Meene's mark from a really nice fic from LugiaP2K, Firsts, available here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6462547/1/Firsts. I like this version of their first meeting. Standing in the rain over a grave. What do you mean I'm an angsty child?  
> ...
> 
> What did you think? Things are starting to move in here. Has Hao guessed? Is Tamao right? What's the deal with Luchist, Peyote and Ashil? Let me know what you think in the comments!

**Author's Note:**

> So this came to me in a fever dream, and I could not rest until I'd started it. This won't be a long fic, maybe ten or so chapters. We'll see other characters than my main three, but not in too much detail I don't think. I know Yoh, Anna, Ryû, Horo-Horo, Ren, Mathilda, Ash, Marco, Meene, and Luchist will show up again, beyond that I'm not so sure. I have a logic for the bonds, but it might not be immediately obvious or ever explicit. What do you think?
> 
> If you'd rather, a French version is available on Fanfiction.net.
> 
> Comments are how I sustain myself, fair lads and lasses!
> 
> Edit: Ten or so chapters? Always the optimist, I suppose.


End file.
